11 - Nothing Odd Will Do Long [T1] (Patreon)

11.

The three of us left the stadium and paused in the car park. The thrill of going on a tiny adventure paused while we negotiated the logistics. "What was your plan?" said Ruth.

"Plan?"

"Emma told me you'd be making some grand romantic gesture."

I scoffed. "Did she? Well, maybe." Under the appraising eye of a mature woman, my idea seemed pretty feeble. "Maybe? Maybe. Maybe not." I gestured. "I was going to drive about a minute that way, to the Mercedes Formula One team's headquarters. And I was going to give a speech about incremental improvement and working as a team and how a team wasn't all about a few floating megabrains but everyone, everyone in all those buildings, pulling together. Emma would have been bored, but she'd have peeked in the windows to try to see Lewis Hamilton. And next season I'd have brought the squad here and given them the same speech, now perfected. So yeah, a romantic rehearsal for a motivational team talk."

Ruth didn't blink. "Let's do my thing. Hop in."

"You drive a Mercedes!" I said. "Small world."

Emma and I got in the back, and after shooting off some texts, Ruth zoomed away.

"You know these roads pretty well," said Emma.

"I do. I come here quite often. Here we are."

The drive had been approximately two minutes; I hadn't even had time to check out all the features in the car. Ruth had taken us to the second destination I had scouted for my evening with Emma: Turweston Flight Centre. "I was going to do this!" I said.

"That so? Great minds think alike. Come on."

I wanted to say she was going the wrong way, that the entrance was to the right, but she was pacing away to the left. I couldn't think why. All that was there were some small planes and some mechanics rushing around.

Moments later we were climbing some steps into a Piper PA-28 Cherokee. Ruth helped us into helmets, apologised for the lack of champagne, then got in the pilot's seat. The tiny little plane rolled forwards, taxied onto the runway, and took off.

There's an incredible passage in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, where Stephen Maturin, a landlubber, describes the feeling of impending annihilation he experienced during his first ocean-churning storm. It came to mind during the rough, violent ascent. The Piper thing had a fucking propeller! I'd only ever seen planes with propellers in Indiana Jones movies. Modern planes should have jet engines, and every passenger should get a front and back parachute, plus a jetpack.

Ten minutes earlier, I had been watching a flying winger grounded, a Frenchman with his head in the clouds, a team born to murmurate forced into rigid, static blocks by an ancient flightless lizard. Ten minutes from there to here, in a little plane, soaring above all my troubles (or almost all, since I tended to keep a few with me), and that was part of the magic of flight. The change in your state came so rapidly it was dizzying.

Once we were at a stable height, I was able to enjoy it. The views were amazing. The feeling of freedom was... no, wait. We were stuck in a tiny coffin miles in the air. No, no sense of freedom. But it was fun in its own way. Just not how I’d imagined my first time in a plane.

"We're coming up to Silverstone," said Ruth. "That's a Formula One track, Emma. Home of British motor racing. I'm a speed freak. I love the feeling of powerful machines under me. There it is: north-east."

"I wasn't born with a silver compass in my mouth," I said, joking that Ruth had been born rich while saying I didn't know where north was.

"To your right, Max. Do you like Formula One?"

"Not really. Not as a sport. Maybe as a spectacle. I'd love to go once for the sounds and the smells. It must be amazing. Polar opposite of an ASMR video." I imagined a hundred thousand spectators in the arena below me, with all the little cars bombing around going nee-ow! Yeah, I'd like to see it once.

"It is amazing. I go every year. That's why I have friends in Turweston. I'm going to bank and go back. Emma, would you like me to do a loop-de-loop?"

"No, thanks," I said, mimicking Emma's voice. I trusted Ruth to fly as much as I trusted Spectrum to coach - a lot, but with reservations.

Ruth grinned and flipped something on one of her many control panels. Not the intro to a daring manoeuvre, thank fuck. Just the plane equivalent of putting your fog lights on.

The descent was terrifying. We could hear Ruth talking to air traffic control through our helmets. She was extremely calm, ATC was extremely professional. But every time anyone spoke, I thought, Oh my God, what's gone wrong? Climb to level one one zero? Why? Why, mate? Then the final approach - Ruth seemed to be flying diagonally at the runway, the way Ziggy would approach a girl at the bar. I slipped my hand into Emma's so that we'd die together. Then, at least, I'd have kept my promise to do something romantic.

And then we hit the runway... and it was so smooth. The little plane aahed along the tarmac, making no more noise than an e-bike. Americans love to whoop and holler when a plane lands, and for the first time I understood the impulse.

"This is your captain speaking," said Ruth through the headset. "We hope you enjoyed the flight. Max, hope that helped with your stress. It's so terribly peaceful, isn't it? Emma, you don't need a man to take you to heaven and back. I hope you're hungry. Dinner's in fifteen."

***

Emma and I milled around with huge grins on our faces. Emma had enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish, but for me it was exciting in retrospect. Still, now that we were back on land, we were both on cloud nine.

Ruth shuttled us to a pub called The Chequered Flag which had a fairly standard British menu. Not expensive at all. Completely, if you'll forgive the phrase, down to earth.

Ruth was chatty - we all were. "My dad used to take me here before races. We'd fly in, come here, then go and watch Michael Schumacher (him) and Jenson Button (me). It's not the best food in Bucks but it's very nostalgic. I feel at home here." She looked around the place - it was such a typical modern pub that it was hard to imagine a woman as classy as Ruth going there on the regular. "But Max. You said you planned to take Emma to the flight centre. I didn't know you could fly. So many talents!"

I desperately wanted a burger but didn't want to eat messy food in front of Ruth. I had recently eaten my first burger in front of Emma and hadn't enjoyed it. I was still trying to impress her, and finishing a meal covered in ketchup and meat juice was not sexy. So I'd eaten it one atom at a time which achieved my goal of not looking like a slob, but the process had detracted somewhat from the pleasure of shoving food in my mouth as fast as poss so that I could enjoy a constant stream of sensory input. I looked up from the menu. "Fly? No. I saw the flight centre had a knife and fork icon on the map. I investigated and decided to bring Emma to the cafe. Scones and a view of the runway."

Ruth frowned. "So your romantic day with your girlfriend was watching non-league football, walking to the outside of the Mercedes building, then having a scone?"

"I also made a teenager cry."

"I'm sure you've made a lot of teenagers cry, Max."

"Pretty sure that was the first ever."

"The day was lovely," said Emma, hugging my arm. "And I like scones. But the flight was breathtaking."

I growled at Ruth. "You won this round..."

She laughed and leaned forward. "You're such a good match. Some couples are strange; you know it won't last. You two have a chance. I want to know how you met."

We were so relaxed and still bubbly from our near-death experience slash gravity-defying adventure that we didn't even make up some tall tale. Together we told the story, from Ziggy and the deli in Manchester through to our double date with Henri and Gemma. Ruth kept me talking. Somehow I was telling them about beating Man City under 16s. I hadn't told Emma much about the Beth Heads arc, but it came out. Most of it. Halfway though I paused and wondered if I'd been drugged. I shook the thought off and continued.

"Wait," said Ruth. "You had Jackie Reaper as your assistant in an indoor seven-a-side match involving amateur players? Jackie Reaper?"

"Bald chap. Talks about The Beatles all the time. Doesn't like being nutmegged. What? What's so surprising about that?"

"I can't quite imagine it. How... how did you get him to do that?"

"I asked him. He volunteered. I don't remember. He got sucked into the story. We all did. What's the big deal? It was a few paid Wednesdays and a couple of unpaid Fridays."

She didn't seem convinced, but she wanted to go back to Ziggy. How I'd found him, how I knew he was good. I gave her my 'comparing players to other players' spiel, which was less abstract now because they'd seen me diagnose a quad tear from the hospitality box. If I could spot an injury, why couldn't I spot a talent?

Ruth pushed some vegetables into her mouth and chewed. When she was ready, she said, "The men's team are hurtling towards relegation. They're only five points from safety. If things get out of hand, will you step in and save them?"

"I can't play."

"I mean as manager."

"Ooh," I said. "Of course I would, but it won't happen. MD would need to decide to sack Ian Evans, which seems unlikely, and he'd need to choose me as replacement. Even if MD thinks I'm talented, he's never going to give me the job on the basis of beating Man City's girls team. No, that's not going to happen."

"So you need more practice. A place to show what you can do."

"Right."

"Which is why you want to start the women's team. So you can show that you're a serious candidate for the manager's job."

"One reason, yeah."

"You'd better get on with it, then."

"Right." That's when it hit me - Ruth was going to offer to finance the team. "I just need to save up, first. I've stopped eating avocado on toast and I'm saving money on clothes. Aren't I, Emma?"

She pulled a face. "Max bought like five of the same cheap black hoodie. Said it helped with decision fatigue. He refuses to upgrade his look."

"Aah," I said, delighted that she'd fallen into my trap. "Ruth, could you help me out? I have this letter from someone but my eyes are very tired. Could you read it out loud?"

Ruth rolled her eyes but took the note. It was the one Longstaff had forwarded to me when we were doing crosswords together. The writer didn't know what address to use. "Dear Max. I've got twins and they're big Darlo fans and you're their hero. Money's hard to come by but I try to get them what they want. This Christmas they said they wanted Max Best drips. I took them to Longstaff's and I couldn't believe my eyes when they ran to the cheapest tops. They were made up, and I even had a bit left over for a little rebound board so they could practise their skills. You've saved Christmas. Thank you so much." Ruth had slowed down as she was reading.

"Oh, Max," said Emma, as she leaned in to hug me.

I accepted the hug. Then, without making eye contact, I said, "I was delighted when I got that, because it would help me win this dispute. But, er..." One side of my mouth curled upwards. "I would have liked to buy something slightly nicer one day soon. With a more premium zip and toggles that stayed the same shape. I'm, er... imprisoned by my own sainthood. The idea of some brat seeing me in a fucking sarong and asking his penniless mum for one... Nah. The moral of the story is, I'm frugal to a fault. I don't splash money around on fripperies. Whichever kind, generous, ravishing benefactor comes along to finance the women's team, her money will go a long way."

Boom! Two birds killed with one stone. Beat that, Daedalus!

Ruth dapped her lips with a napkin, maybe to hide a smile? But then she was all business. "MD has told me what you want. 200K. How did you come to that figure?"

"I plucked it out of thin air."

"That's not what a woman who's the target for every con-man in the North-West likes to hear, Max."

I shrugged. "I know it's more than enough for two seasons. It could go a long way, actually. I want a full-time women's coach. Let's say 25 grand a year. Then it's renting a pitch to train on, buying some new equipment, kit, transport to matches. The players won't get paid at first. Just starting the team and competing in the league next year shouldn't add up to more than a hundred. 200 is so that I don't have to think about it and so I don't get an ulcer every time we lose. It will take time to start a whole new team from scratch. People don't have vision. Round one funding has to include round two as well. And by the time the 200 runs out, the men's team should be selling players and starting to make serious profits."

"The men's team will subsidise the women's?"

"If needed. There's more money coming into the women's game. Women's transfer fees are slowly rising. If it keeps going like that, the women's team will be profitable, too."

Ruth stared at something. Some guy she knew, maybe. "A few years ago, Sunderland had a great women's team. The men were relegated and the women lost their contracts. If I were to finance your project, I'd want assurances that wouldn't happen."

I speared a piece of pasta. "Could be arranged, I guess. Siloed money. Trusts and things. MD's the man for that."

"The thing is, Max, talent isn't enough. You need a business plan. You need to think things through from all angles. Two hundred thousand is a lot of money. When MD told me your idea I thought: no way. Ask someone else. I don't like football. I don't care if local girls have a place to play. If the women's team would be run like the men's, I'd say it's a net positive that it doesn't exist. But you're compelling. You'd give them an opportunity to do what they love and you'd make sure they were treated with respect. Female players get injured a lot more than men; the medical room needs to be welcoming."

"I told Dean I want it to feel like a spa."

Ruth broke into a grin. "Charming boy. Now, despite my misgivings I've been doing some research. Research you should have been doing, by the way. Have you been following the transfers this week?"

"This week? No, I've been rammed. I know Chelsea are buying every player going."

"That's the men's team. Chelsea Women sold Bethany England to Tottenham for 250 thousand. That's a new British record. And here's an interesting one. Jordan Nobbs, who is thirty years old, moved from Arsenal to Aston Villa for thirty thousand pounds."

"Huh," I said, blood starting to pump.

"What? That's low, isn't it?" asked Emma.

"You expect star players to go for bigger and bigger fees," I mused. "But what's sort of missing in the women's game, as far as I can tell, is all the transfers underneath. 99% seem to move at the end of their contract, for free. There isn't a market as such. But this move suggests that one is developing; Nobbs is near the end of her career. Being able to sell okay players for okay money is a bit of a game-changer for a club like Chester. That makes starting a women's team way more desirable. Urgent, even."

Ruth nodded. "I've heard from my contacts that Arsenal are plotting to buy Alessia Russo from Manchester United. Her contract expires in the summer. Which means her fee should be low, Emma. But the numbers I've heard are astronomical. They'd smash the transfer record for a player they could get for free in a few months. You know what this is? The start of the bubble. If you can find the next Alessia Russo, there's profit to be had."

I nodded. "I know. That's why it's good I'm an agent, too. I'm going to spend all of January scouting. I'm sure I'll find loads of good players, and if I can't get them started at Chester I will still be their agent. I'll do all right either way."

Ruth placed her cutlery down. "No. You will bring them to Chester. You will start this team. And you can't be their agent. It's a conflict of interest."

"I can."

"You can't. I will shoot it down. And even if you could argue your case in the court of public opinion, it's going to be pretty surreal when the Chester manager turns up to negotiate a transfer between Hull and QPR. It's odd. Nothing odd will do long. No, you'll manage the women and live out your tactical fantasies. Chester will get talented players that the club can sell for a profit. And you will tell me the ones likely to be sold for big fees and I will be their agent." She smiled.

"You?" said Emma.

"Yes. Me. That way, I'll be a local hero for funding the team, and I'll get my money back. This country is run on cakeism. I plan to buck the trend. I'll have my cake and eat it, too." She summoned a waiter. "We're ready for dessert." She turned to Emma to explain why she was being such a capitalist. "Planes, trains, and automobiles are expensive. Horses? Horses are ruinous."

***

I lapsed into silence for a while, thinking things through while I spooned a banana split into my mouth.

On the one hand, Ruth would give me the money I needed to start the women's team. With a big chunk of cash propelling me, the team could really take off. On the other hand, I'd accepted a flat wage at Chester expecting to make a bit of side-hustle money along the way. Giving Ruth her fair share was fair, sort of, but also, I wanted it for myself. How was I ever going to get past the 'walks and scones' spending level if I couldn't profit from my talent?

There were other rich people in Cheshire... But I didn't know them.

I watched Ruth and Emma as they chatted. Emma was great at getting to know people. "Are you dressage or eventing?"

"Eventing. For me it's all about the jumps. But I have a dressage trainer for my seat."

"Oh, very sensible. Max told me you have an amazing stable. No fat horses, he said."

"Did he now?"

"Now, what do you think about working equitation?"

And so it went while I worked from right to left across my plate.

"I've had an idea," I said, halfway across. The women seemed startled that I was there. They gave each other a look like 'who's this guy?' I waited for their faces to return to normal. "I've had an idea," I repeated.

"Yes, Max," said Emma, turning to me and sitting up straight like a diligent schoolgirl. This was a sign she was mildly annoyed that I'd interrupted. But I was too enthusiastic to wait.

"Ruth has money and intimidates managing directors. I'm a floating megabrain. You're one of those lawyer people."

"The lawyer people. Sounds like one of those old bands you listen to."

"Why don't we..." I leaned forward and spoke more softly. "Why don't we start an agency? I'll find players and say what kinds of teams they should play for. You'll deal with the contracts. You'll be the one who turns up to meetings and squeezes another couple of mill out of Fulham. No conflict of interest for me any more." Ruth made a little throat-clearing noise. "Yeah, okay, there sort of would be. But not really. Not really. And all I'll be doing is choosing who the agency takes care of. I'll be hidden. I won't be in rooms. My name won't be on paperwork. It's... I'll be a couple of steps removed."

"Um, Max," said Emma.

"Yes, babes?"

"We were trying to have a conversation over here. Before you interrupted. We'll get back to it, if that's all right with you?"

"Sure."

Emma took a spoonful of my melting ice cream and pushed it past those lips of hers.

"I knew it," said Ruth. "I knew he'd tried to get us into a three-way."

***

I still had the Match Overview and saw that Chester scraped through with a draw. One point. Still five points clear of relegation. A few minutes on the pitch for Raffi Brown, but no goal for Henri. I thought back to when he'd started dating Gemma. I'd thought they were an odd couple. What had Ruth said? Nothing odd can last?

I looked at some other scores. Darlington drew. Bad result for them. Meanwhile, in the FA Cup, Sheffield Wednesday beat Newcastle. What a shame for Emma's dad.

***

The next morning I drove to Chester to watch the 12s and 14s and grab some of the XP I lost by leaving the first team's match early. When I arrived, Spectrum fished in his backpack and handed me an envelope.

"What's this?"

"Handing in my notice," he said.

"All right. Does it slag me off and that?"

"No? No! It's copied from a template. I've never..."

"What's your notice period?"

"I don't know." He looked away. "I thought you'd tell me."

What was I feeling? I would have expected relief that a problem had resolved itself, or disappointment. Mostly I was just worried about him. "I’ll check with Joe. Have you got something else lined up?"

"No."

"Well don't go before you've got a job. I don't want you freezing to death."

"Er... kay."

"Can I ask why?" I said, flapping the envelope around.

He shook his head, rapidly, then changed to nodding. "It's just weird. It's too weird. Kian? He's a lovely kid but he's awful. Vivek is literally the worst player I've ever coached. You're asking us to coach literal kids who come in off the street. Is it because they're your clients? Why else would you do it? Tyson's a striker but you tell him not to shoot. I heard you were making substitutions from the corporate boxes. You've got some good ideas but a lot more bad ones. You don't know how to run a football club. How could you? You've been a player for two months. It's mad. It makes no sense. I don't want to be blamed for what happens. I can't face the kids. I don't want to be part of this relegation. I don't like you breathing down my neck all the time. I have to look after myself. My career and my mental health. Sorry." He added the last word because I was staring in amazement at him. He must have mistaken my surprise for hostility.

"All right," I said. My first reaction was defensive - ready to push back, explain how wrong he was, fight my corner. But what was the point? He'd already decided to leave. And he did have some valid arguments. I swallowed my initial burst of rage and focused on what was important. "Please do not communicate your low opinion of them to Kian, Vivek, and the other new kids who will come."

"No, I - "

"I was going to ask if I could take the second half with the 14s. It's not a punishment or me trying to show you up. I need to practise my skills and try things for my coaching badges. Is that okay with you?"

"Well, yeah."

"Good." I looked up. There were some dark, angry clouds gathering. You had to be a pretty dedicated parent to stand on the touchline and watch your kid splash around in that kind of weather. I reset my face and went off to have some chats with them. First, because they were a big part of the Chester FC community. And second, because maybe some of them had daughters... and I had a women's team to start.

...

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