'Huddersfield Versus Crewe' is included in the terrific, new Tindal Street anthology, 'Going the Distance.' More details on the left

'HUDDERSFIELD VERSUS CREWE'
by Alan Beard

�Pools? God. Yes. Years since I did those. Frank never bothered. It�s a man�s thing isn�t it, the pools? The lottery�s more women.�

I reassured her: lots of women on my round. Single women, too. She gave me a sharp look at this.

�I wouldn�t know where to start with filling it in.�

I could help her. I wouldn�t mind showing her.

�I�m just going out.� She was dressed up, plenty of eye make up, a necklace catching streetlight. A long, long neck. �Call next week could you? I�m Kath and you?�

�David. Dave.�

How things start. I nearly didn�t call. I was drumming up business on a second round I�d just taken over. I wasn�t having much luck among the narrow rows of terraces whose sloping streets always seemed to be in fog that autumn and winter. It was the last house I tried before I trudged back under the motorway home.

I�ve always kept up the pools round, all through the other jobs I�ve had, mainly factory work, but also shop assistant, maintenance man in a block of offices, supply postman. Itty-bitty jobs my wife Liz called them. But that�s not quite right: the maintenance job lasted six years until the firm relocated to Scotland. The pools always brought in that little bit extra. It also got me out of the house.

The way I saw it, towards the end, that�s what they wanted - me out the house. It seemed to me they were ganging up on me. My wife would say �You�re just short of useless.� ( Just being the money I brought in - she often earned more with her part time nursing). �Why do you bother pretending to take an interest? You�re so full of yourself,� she�d continue. �Apologies for breathing,� I�d say.

My daughter Ruth was no better. When I talked to her there was this sneer on her face the whole time. As if she couldn�t quite believe what she was seeing. If she could she�d lie in front of MTV all day. An essay she wrote, on �My Dad�: �He shaves in the sink and mum is sick of him.� I pointed it out to Liz. She said, �And?�

The cat was held in more esteem. I�d come home weighed down with shopping and park the stuff in fridge and cupboard, the kid�s chocs, her yoghurts, my beers, and not say a word to either of them busy anyway with TV watching, hoovering, on the phone. Of an evening we�d shuffle past each other between fridge and sofa. There didn�t seem much to look forward to; I was sitting on the toilet reading pension leaflets and working out sums. My hair getting wirier, more like a wig each day. My latest job didn�t help, fork lift driving in a warehouse and a lot of it was waiting about between deliveries. I looked at the days in my life and could see no difference in them, unless we won the pools. I�m sure Liz thought that as a poolsman I should have been able to arrange that.

The night I first went into her house I smoked so much I silently vowed to smoke no more. �Blimey. No doubt you can keep up then?� She wanted me to catch the doubleness of her words.

We sat on adjoining sofas in this small room. The former tenant�s heavily patterned wallpaper - she hadn�t bothered to decorate though she�d been there three years - made it seem even smaller. We pored over the coupon I put on the coffee table, our hands and knees close. Her hair smelt of tea; it was the colour nicotine leaves on the fingers. I explained the green panel, the blue panel, the booster entry. I could see how her eyes smiled - not quite her mouth - at that. She thought the crosses were like marks on a treasure map.

Every week she found some excuse for inviting me in. �Top of the Pops� on the television while she searched her bag for change. She always asked advice. �Shall I go for Huddersfield versus Crewe, sounds like a draw to me.� I told her to stick to the same numbers, the same pattern. �It�s the best way.� She wouldn�t. She�d come to the door and say she was on the phone and to come in and I�d watch her squat in a position she must have assumed hundreds of times she looked so comfortable. All the time I looked over the planes and corners and curves of her face for the beauty I saw there.

Sex with her was like dishes being served, one after the other, and all tasting new, ingredients you recognised but a new mix. She quite liked me to eat off her. I spent a long time gazing at her pale, rounded, marked skin, like a hoard of gold in the light from the angle-poise. It was a lazy, dabbling kind of sex, but occasionally she clung and dug into me hard, kneading, as if to make something new of my flesh. After I was tingling, felt the blood reach right down to my fingers and toes.

By now I was always late in from the round and told Liz I always would be - meeting a mate down the pub. She took this with a shrug - �Enjoy yourself.�

Thoughts of Kath cut through the week, far off lights calling through the fog as I stomped around the house. �Wotcher strop-features,� said Ruth. �Villa losing are they?�

Liz finally noticed. I was spending too long in the bathroom looking into the mirror trying to figure out what it was Kath saw in me. �You got a woman?� Her dark eyebrows arrowed. �Yeh -you,� I said, but soon after I left, Kath had been saying I could, I should, and moved three quarters of a mile away under the always roaring motorway to the other side.

We�d eat cheese on toast and do little. Didn�t go out much. It was a relief to come home to such quiet. She liked me for the oil on me, the way I talked apparently. My steadiness. I was �handsome in a way.� �What way?� �A way I like.� I liked her for the difference she presented. She was a Brummie but had spent time away and lost - almost - the accent. She was so pale after Liz�s dark looks. �My ghost,� I called her.

�You can save me from going under in this place,� she said, nodding towards the window. The fog was a mixture of weather and fumes from the battery factory, she said. She said she could hardly breathe out there and nothing would grow in the garden, a short one backing on to the motorway embankment. (She was later disappointed to find I didn�t have the green fingers she wanted, but I made up for it in other ways). She said the neighbours stole her catalogue parcels. She talked of moving out, somewhere �nice� - Sutton, for example, but we couldn�t afford that.

I didn�t think it was so bad. True when the motorway cut our district in two when I was a kid it was deemed the rougher part. Liz in particular didn�t want Ruth mixing with the boys from here. But on my round I found little difference in the people - some were friendly, I got a kiss and a tenner from someone who won a couple of thou third dividend; others guarded their property as if you had a second job as a burglar. I had to admit it wasn�t as pleasant with the high sagging factory walls, the shunting yards and the huge weathered billboard (a fading �It Could Be You�) welcoming you, but then the other side wasn�t exactly Solihull either.

Kath was an actress. �An actor,� she�d say, �an actor. I am an actor. Or at least I was.� We watched the videos that proved it. In one she opened the door to police, in curlers, a shrugged on dressing gown, and was pushed aside. An ageing moll. (I got her to play that role later, and I was a policeman who stayed to interrogate her). A speaking part in the Cable company ad. No, she couldn�t tell the difference between a BT phone and this one. Except when the bills came in. Behind her was Central Library and the glugging fountain in Chamberlain Square. I saw that a few times, and noted again how she was cast as ordinary, hair blowing in the wind looked almost grey, and yet she seemed young to me. She actually got her phone installed and bills paid for a month as part of the deal. �I made so many calls I ran out of people to call. My daughter got sick of me.�

Her daughter, Bernadette - Bernie - was going to be the one that did it. Actually be an actor. She was tall, brilliant, her face so expressive, camera friendly. I asked her how she knew since she hardly saw her now. Bernie, at fifteen, had decided to live with her father after the divorce, and took his side always. �All right it�s true at that time I was a bit messed up. I was seeing Frank who I later moved in with, and doing drugs, a bit.� She regretted not fighting for custody through the courts. That would have sobered her up and Bernie would have seen her how she could be, straight, responsible. Like now. On top of things. Bernie would have stayed and by now Kath would be visiting her in London, seeing her perform. Standing by her in photographs.

Kath told me it was she who did all the work with the baby and her bringing up. It was she who made Bernie what she was. How could she choose the father who left her to her own devices all those years? Neither was he the saint he made himself out to be. I sat and agreed with her word for word, because I felt too how children can be so heartless, unthinking.

One night in spring I came in from the job and she was listening to Virgin Classic Album Tracks - U2�s �She Moves in Mysterious Ways.� Doing a little dance. Sunlight was squeezing in from the tiny shred of sky visible above the embankment.

�Do you think I�m mysterious?�

�Yes, very.�

�I used to think I was an alien. Or been abducted by aliens. But maybe I just dreamt it and you know some dreams are so real they become real.�

Again I looked over the paleness of her face, the tiny red marks - neck creases - under her ear, her hair tied back gold in the late slanting sun. I wanted to get to the bottom of her.

�So you�re an alien. I always wondered. Your slippery skin. Your bug eyes.�

�No, I mean it. I mean I�m not me.�

�Possessed maybe.�

The whole room was gold and she golden in it. I moved towards her.

She told me how handsome Frank was: �All he had was nice black hair and a good couple of eyes. When all�s said and done it�s the eyes that get me on a man every time.� And how she missed her ex - a steady type like me, and although it brought a bad taste to my mouth, I understood it, it was a kind of accounting for herself. And because a similar thing was happening to me, thoughts of my wife, soon to be my ex, had begun where for long years when she was right beside me I�d done nothing but try and block her out.

Little things: finding Liz�s photobooth picture, the one that didn�t make it into the passport fifteen years ago, in the inside pocket of a jacket I�d hardly worn and picked up on a forage back there. When Kath played music it was 70�s stuff - T.Rex and Roxy Music. Her favourite single was Hawkwind�s �Silver Machine.� Liz had similar tastes, only Kath liked the treble high and Liz liked it low, more bass.

I thought it was to be expected really and it needn�t be a problem, but one night during my first summer here I lay awake watching Kath undress. To cool us we had the window open behind drawn curtains. Her skin was still pale but glowed from the warmth of the day. I recalled a scene from an early holiday with Liz. Torremolinos in June. She took off her bikini in the hotel room. The evening light and her deep tan made it look as if she�d put on some bizarre skin tight costume that left her private parts exposed. Through the night with Kath snuggling close but not wanting sex, I seemed to hear the sea breaking outside the window: maybe the noise of the motorway.

No-one seemed to call on Kath, the phone never rang. The people on my round didn�t know much about her, though they remembered Frank. I asked her where she was going the night I first called, all dressed up. She said some function, she couldn�t remember, as if she went to them all the time.

One night though when I got in, still thinking it strange to get my key ready on the corner of this street dominated by the motorway that rose above it, she was on the phone. She was crying, the receiver in her lap. Bernie was on the other end. I took the phone from her, despite her protests.

�Can�t you be nice to your mother for once.�

�Who are you?� said the voice. �Where�s Frank?�

�Frank�s gone. I�m here now.�

�But who the fuck are you?� And she put the phone down.

After that was our first argument. Because she hadn�t told her daughter about me. How was that going to make me feel? I said she should write to her explaining I wasn�t some fly-by-night. But she was still wet-faced from the call and I stopped and put my arms wide. �You�ve got to believe in me. We�ve got to stick together.� She agreed and came close and kissed and promised everything would be all right. There was nothing wrong.

I was still doing my old round. Which is how I found out my wife was no longer there, nowhere in the district. A former neighbour said something about her going. Sure enough I called on our old house even though Liz had cancelled the pools when I left and a tall Asian in white robes and waistcoat opened the door. I asked him did he want to do the pools but he wanted to get rid of me and didn�t give me a chance to look through, past him to my old world.

I didn�t go back. I gave up my round there. I knew she�d have to contact me soon, for the divorce to progress. She did and she said she didn�t require maintenance any more, they were all doing quite nicely now.

In her letter, which was almost friendly, she said I should keep in contact with Ruth, and that I should want to, and I did, although at one time I hadn�t of course. Ruth came to our house a couple of times, nodded disdainfully at Kath and sat and watched television until it was time for me to take her back. So instead I met her on my own, once a month, and we�d go out, to the cinema mainly, the latest blockbuster - she liked special effects, Independence Day, Total Recall, and so did I - and a Macdonalds after. More recently she wanted to go for a meal, she introduced me to Greek food, or a new balti at some place across the city. For many years, I told her, our diet had had to be as bland as possible because otherwise she wouldn�t eat it. She said she was grown up now - she�d be sixteen soon.

She tells me of her new life, how Liz has changed - brighter, more relaxed apparently from the burden of me being lifted, and of Robert, her stepfather. I was glad to hear her say that though he was �all right� and worked hard he was a bit of a creep. But then anyone over 25 was a bit of a creep to Ruth.

She pointed out that what I was doing, had done, was nothing new. Just the same as thousands of others, like her friends� parents, middle aged prats running after younger women. But she�s not, I said, only a few years. Same as your mother. (I turned it into a compliment for Kath when I got back but she didn�t want to hear anything Ruth might have to say). Anyway, I added, your mother�s no angel. I was referring to a brief (I think) affair she�d had years before which Ruth wouldn�t have known about but she nodded as if she did.

We - Kath and me - went to see �The English Patient�. I practically had to force her out of the house. I thought she�d want to go. �You�re the actress,� I said. She didn�t correct me. Before she went she read up on the film and during the screening she told me the critic�s opinions.

After we dropped into a nearby bar, across from the Hippodrome. I thought she�d like to be near a theatre. When we�d settled in a corner by the window I asked her if she couldn�t refrain from telling me what everyone else thought of the film during it, so I could make up my own mind.

�Oh,� she said, sniffing, and looked out at the crowds leaving the theatre. It was nice to be out amongst people. I�d thought about going back to the Villa again. I knew Kath wouldn�t want to come, but she wouldn�t mind me going.

�No, I don�t mean I don�t want to hear, but after the film.�

�No, you�re perfectly right,� she said, still looking away. I gazed back towards the bar. I had been sat in a corner like this once out with Liz. She was at the bar and I watched as a few men glanced across at her, some not so slyly. How she stood on her toes in strappy shoes, waiting to be served, then dropped back on her heels. The backs of her knees bent in, one a deeper hollow. How she moved steadily across the room holding the two pints and not spilling a drop underneath her narrow, lopsided smile. A man was singing as we came out and for once it was a good, strong voice. A small mob who had been shouting and chucking things stopped to listen. His voice became larger only drowned out by a passing bus, and he got on his knees for the finale. Me and Liz clapped and whistled for the man in the padded sleeveless anorak with his arms wide.

Me and Kath got the bus back to the motorway intersection and stopped on the corner by the billboard to light cigarettes. She had been quiet on the way home despite the rowdy passengers trying to get everyone to sing �Three Lions�. She turned, she was smiling, she was trying hard. �I�ll get a job. Do something useful with myself, you see.� That�s great, I said and apologised for what I said in the bar. For some reason we didn�t carry on down the street, but stayed until we�d finished smoking. We watched lights arc into the sky as cars went up slip roads. Then we put our arms round each other and hugged for what we�d done in this life, and what also we had no control over.

She did get a job. At the local supermarket on the one till. But she didn�t like the customers, got flustered with special offers and always feared armed robbery. She came home jittery. She took more and more time off and in the end I told her she should leave the job if it was getting her down so much, we could cope. (I thought she�d get the sack soon anyway). But then we�d definitely have to stay here. She didn�t care, she was grateful I�d said the words, and she rang up, went to get her wages and never went there again.

She hardly ever went anywhere again. One Sunday afternoon with fog again at the window she cried at �Oliver� the musical, as much at Bill Sykes and Nancy�s twisted relationship as over Oliver�s plight. During the film I�d laughed at the mock-Cockney and now wished I hadn�t. I�d say that was the beginning.

She started spending days in bed, or wandered downstairs in her dressing gown (I said was she auditioning for her old role but she didn�t seem to know what I was talking about). I�d say, �What you been up to?� �Not a lot,� she�d say. She always had excuses - �If I�d gone out I�d have drownded.� (Mimicking my accent).

She got a cat, I don�t know where from. It didn�t like me; it scratched me. �It�s only a kitten,� she said. It wasn�t. She put a dirt tray in the kitchen. You have to train it to go outside, I said. She wouldn�t. Her fingers started smelling of cat food. Her breath was fags, but then so was mine.

At night with Kath in bed I zapped through cable channels (as Kath did in the day and evening: where�s the zapper, she said once, things are no good without the zapper). I watched the weather in Norwegian, Exotica Erotica, Tommy Vance and MTV which I imagined Ruth would be watching. You had to hand it to Liz she had turned out much better than I would have imagined - I looked forward to seeing her now. I thought of her early life, not so much babyhood because that was just a whirl of broken nights, mopping up, feeding, bathing. But of later when she grew into who she was. How she couldn�t get enough of learning. The phases she went through, I remember her doing the Ancient Civilisations: copying the alphabets of the Egyptians and Phoenicians (the trouble she had with that word) and writing messages in hieroglyphics. She made her bedroom into a museum, with a sign on the door and exhibits (bits of broken plates, paintings she�d done), and charged admission. Her Bugs Bunny teeth, her shining face, the freckles beginning that she would hate later. The singing of hymns, trying to do handstands in the kitchen, her rending cries if she was hurt. When she was reading �The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe� she said I was like Mr Tumnus (something to do with my wiry hair). Telling me off about smoking even though I was doing it outside in the yard, in all weathers, wind and snow whirling about me.

Even though I�d lived here for a couple of years I couldn�t get used to the place. Even though people would shout hello across the street, stop and chat about the Villa and whether Stan Collymore was any good, I didn�t feel part of things here. I�d grown up just down the road but it could have been another city. Ironing one Saturday afternoon listening to the football on the radio I was looking out into the back garden, the bare laburnum framed in the window above the low square hedge. A leaf scraped along the path in a light wind, I could hear the cars and lorries moving always just beyond, out of sight. It seemed wrong. I couldn�t get it to seem familiar to me.

She was ill, she had a pain in her chest. She called it her �fear� pain. She was on the verge of being sick all the time. She wouldn�t go to the doctor. I started to feel coming back from work like I did with Liz in our last years together and wondered whether all relationships ended up heading this way; this one had got there much quicker. I stayed out longer on the pools round. Started attending matches. Stan Collymore wasn�t any good.

Two years almost to the night she came out of the house all dressed up like that first time. I was just arriving home. Even from my distance I could see she wasn�t as expert at applying the make up. She didn�t seem to see me and walked off down the street. I followed her but she just walked down to the land underneath the motorway and wandered among the pillars holding up the rising road. I went back. She returned about an hour later, said nothing.

I wondered should I get help, call a doctor or something. Instead I called Bernie. The number I eventually found on the back of an envelope wasn�t London, a Coventry one. There was no reply but I left a message. Could she just come and see her mother, could she just come and talk to her, it would mean so much.

�Hello Dave, � I heard as I came in, dripping wet from the round.

I wouldn�t have known it was her daughter, must have taken after the father, except for the pale skin which brought out roses in Bernie as opposed to her mother�s milder, more mottled colouring: age.

Kath was watching the television, Michael Barrymore (early on she�d wanted us to apply to go on that show but I hadn�t wanted to have the piss taken out of me), and keeping her eye on her daughter. I dripped, took my coat off, ran my hands through my wet hair, went to the kitchen, and came back. I thought they must have had the big conversation, or Kath was so pleased to see her she could hardly speak, beyond the usual exclamations - well, look at you! Actually Bernie wasn�t tall and didn�t look glamorous to me. She wore trainers, dull green tracksuit bottoms, splashed with rain. She chewed gum, and looked around frowning at the room. When Kath went upstairs she leaned forward and asked what tale Kath was spinning now.

It turned out she wasn�t a drama student, though she had applied once. She was working in a hotel. Assistant Manager, she reckoned. I thought of Ruth who I was seeing at the weekend ( Imrans, Balsall Heath) as Bernie went on to detail her mother�s crimes. She was lazy, selfish, nuts. Hadn�t I noticed?

�You could try being sympathetic,� I said.

�Tried that,� she said, �so did dad, and look where it got him. Wrecked his life. Probably Frank�s too - but who gives a toss about him?�

We heard the toilet flush, movement upstairs.

�Are you going to visit her again?� I hoped not, I was bristling, could have smacked her, but I was thinking of Kath.

�Nah,� she said, �Don�t see much point. And you? You going to stay the course?� She got up, stretched herself.

�Yes,� I said, feeling a last rain drop run down under my collar. �I�m starting on the decorating next week.�