Come on you blues

Gascoigne has already read Fever Pitch. Now he wants to read more
October 19, 1996

The year's last swallows dipped and weaved in the twilight; pipistrelles fluttered beneath the ivied arches, and the college fountain plashed and tinkled as musically as it had done every day for the last four centuries. The crisp, smoky smell of autumn was in the air. Softly the ancient clock chimed the quarter-hour. As he drank in the scene from the senior common room windows, Gervase Dewell, JVC Professor of Passing Technique, shrugged his ageing, but still bearish, shoulders beneath his gown, and thought, happily, as he always did around now: it will be dinner soon. Time, perhaps, for a little something?

As if his thoughts had taken on material form, he heard a clink and, barely audible beneath it, a velvet footfall as it neared him through the thick pile carpet: Simmons with the drinks. Dewell turned and bestowed a superior smile upon the servant. Uncanny, and how pleasing, Simmons's ability to just turn up like that.

- A drink before dinner, professor? asked Simmons.

- Ah, splendid, Simmons, splendid, said Dewell, taking a frosty Labbatt's Ice from the silver tray. He admired the condensation coursing lazily down the gaudy label and turned back again to the view.

- A beautiful evening, sir, if you will permit the observation, said Simmons.

- Absolutely, Simmons, absolutely. The start of another fine season, I'll be bound.

Simmons briefly closed his eyes and tilted his head at just the right degree to indicate acknowledgment and deference, and Dewell made a similar gesture which said, instead: you may go now. There was something about his ability to butle which reminded Dewell of something-something vague yet troubling at the edges of his consciousness, but what? Dewell watched his retreating form with a kind of sadness. Poor Simmons, he thought: an attenuated, lanky frame, all spindly legs and long, wraith-like arms. He would never make a good footballer; the first tackle would crush him like a leaf. Tall, yes, but no good in the air: the neck too long, the cranium, blue and delicate as porcelain, too frail to head the ball. If he'd come from a rich family he could have crammed and bought himself a place, but would have struggled to get a third; a waste of his time and of ours. But a damn fine college servant. Good to see these local boys being put to some kind of use. And as he contemplated that locus, the world beyond the college walls, with its skewed priorities, its surly inhabitants, radiating defiance and resentment, he shivered. Dewell watched the boys in their gowns begin to drift through the quad towards the dining hall. Look at them all. Stocky, deft performers to a lad. So much potential. So much talent waiting to be teased out of their fluid sinews, their solid bones.

The muted gong sounded through the corridors of the Master's Lodge: dinner was served. He'd looked at the menu: tomato soup, chips, peas, lobster and a fried slice, followed by the chef's renowned Roues de Charrette served with a delicate cr?me au lait and chocolate ice-cream. The college's curriculum might have changed over the centuries; but its kitchens were still the best. He finished the last drops of chilled lager from the bottle and thought of the pleasant hour or so ahead of him: the first Formal Hall of the academic year, the boys, hushed and awed as the Master, bowed yet venerable with all the accumulated seasons of his service to club and country (forty-eight caps and fifteen of those as captain), took his place at the head of the table, his Adidas gown weaving a subtle pattern in the air behind him, the hushed yet penetrating grace ("Que sera, sera"); the clink of cutlery and china as food is shovelled down the hungry mouths; the scrape of chairs as heads bow for the valedictory ("they think it's all over," says the Master, and two hundred throats murmur in response, "it is now"), and all followed by liqueurs and Silk Cuts in the Master's drawing-room. Dewell's stomach growled.

- And what is your opinion, asked the Master, in his piping, earnest voice, of the new lot?

Dewell brushed some cigarette ash from his gown.

- What can I say, Master? he chortled. Another golden year. I flatter myself to think that the admissions procedures are as far-sighted as ever.

For in the last five years alone-ever since Dewell had been given the honorary post of admissions tutor, with special responsibility for talent-spotting, the college had supplied the following: thirteen caps at international level, forty-nine Premier League caps, of whom eleven were now captains, and dozens of first, second and third-division places; a healthy clutch of promising coaches, linesmen, and referees; even those who had squandered their time, which, after all, every student had a right to do, as long as the sponsorship money kept coming in (and their failures, however much they grieved him and his colleagues, only served to bring the other successes into sharper relief), had managed to get jobs in sports journalism or match-funding; the college's reputation stood so high that even someone with two left feet would make a living somehow.

The Master sucked contemplatively on his Southern Comfort.

- And who do you rate best among the new boys?

Dewell, accepting a schooner of Tia Maria from the humbly inclined figure of Simmons, loved this question above all others. There was nothing more exciting than the spotting of some prodigious new talent, raw, inchoate, but alive with energy; every year contained at least one such, but every so often the interview process threw up someone with such dazzling ball-control skills, such imaginative intelligence in the air and on the ground, that one perhaps saw another Pel?, another Cantona, in the making, and only the ruthless procedure of tuition and training would determine whether this was a freak flash of inspiration, an uncommonly good day, or whether, on the day, and at the end of 90 minutes, it would all come good in the end.

As it happened, there was one whom Dewell had interviewed personally, with mounting, quivering excitement, and what made this discovery so thrilling, almost gaudily serendipitic, was the amusing coincidence of his name.

- Well, Master, there is one lad I'm keeping my eye on, said Dewell, mischievously twirling the ruby liquid in his glass. By a funny coincidence, he's called Gascoigne.

The Master's eyebrows shot up in amusement.

- Is he...

- No, no relation, Master. Or at least certainly not close. Still, you never know. I do hope I am not letting this fortuitous circumstance cloud my judgement. We remember what happened to Hopkins.

Hopkins, Dewell's predecessor as admissions tutor, had made the unfortunate mistake of rashly admitting a boy into the college called Liam Brady; as it turned out, the boy had had to leave after five terms (asthma, china shins, almost total lack of proprioception, and, on the big days, a guaranteed tendency to choke), and Hopkins had wisely been moved back into his special area of expertise, throw-ins.

- What's good about him?

- Difficult to say at this stage, as you well know, Master. Yet he was able to demonstrate the most brilliant control. The ball seemed glued to his feet. Dr Turchi couldn't get the ball off him at interview. Had to bring him down in the end.

The Master whistled softly.

- Turchi, eh?

The fiery Italian was not normally used for interviews. A brilliant tactician-brilliant-yet with a ruthless and savage temperament which had caused him to be sent off one time too many, and if he had had to be curbed, not so much for his own good as for the good of his pupils (there were a few graduates still on crutches as a result of his "enthusiasm"), he was still a jewel in the college's teaching crown.

The Master picked at a stray thread where his sponsor's ancient logo had been, lovingly transferred from his last, fallen-to-bits gown ("either that gown goes," said his redoubtable wife, "or I go;" he had thought about it).

- Well I do hope, Dewell, that this young Gascoigne does not bear any of the-ah-unfortunate character traits of his illustrious namesake.

- I do hope so, too. But he does seem, on initial acquaintance at least, to be a reasonably well-adjusted young man. One would not like to let Mr Hackenfasser loose on any more students than is absolutely necessary.

- Yes, Hackenfasser, said the Master uncomfortably, and they both grimaced, as at a nasty taste.

- Another Southern Comfort, Master? asked Simmons, who had once again turned up, with his silver tray, to save what was left of the evening.

as master and don talked, not two hundred feet away, Gascoigne himself was in his new rooms, unpacking his trunk, hanging up his tracksuits, reverentially folding his match shirts (how proud he had been that day when, with his parents, he had been fitted out in his first college kit), uncoiling his sweat-socks, unwrapping the newspaper from his plate, his knife and fork, his mug. He felt monkish, absorbed, the bare walls, the uncluttered room, lending an air of intense and scholarly application, and holding, therefore, the promise of sponsors' riches all the more justifiably and tantalisingly in prospect; he was nervous, but proud. Like so many of his fellow freshers, he had never stayed away from home before for more than one night, unless it had been for European matches, and then only in the company of brothers and schoolfriends. He had cautiously taken the first few steps towards friendship with one or two of the boys; the first cuts and thrusts of intellectual debate had started when a severe-looking young man to his left had asked, in a voice of jocular contempt, whether Ruud Gullit's contribution to the game had really been anything more than an audacious hairdo. Such iconoclasm! The others had gasped, and then angrily counter-argued, citing his dazzling midfield ability, his rocket-like shots, and Gascoigne had argued with them; but he had been secretly thrilled by this young man's nerve.

In the lower shelf of his trunk lay his rolled-up posters, his father's tearful parting gift-a cherished poster of the Arsenal Double-winning team of 1991-92-his picture of his honest, homely girlfriend, Debbi ("I'll wait for you, Paul"), in its silver frame. And underneath them, something else; something private, something he had never, somehow, been able to relinquish, however hard he'd tried, or been encouraged; something-well, a few things, technically speaking, but of one family-that he knew he would be unable to speak of with anyone. No one at all. Until he knew whom he could trust.

dewell's preferred lecturing style was to pace slowly up and down the length of the hall, head either facing the ceiling or his shoes but never anywhere else, hands gripping the lapels of his gown in a thumbs-up position, and delivering his speech (now so familiar to him that he could, and indeed once did, in the privacy of his bathroom, recite it backwards) in a weary monotone. He had seen it done like that in a video decades before, and it had impressed him. He relieved the tedium by injecting swoops of emphasis and register entirely at random.

- When Sepp Blatter, who of course should need no introduction from me, but was chief executive of FIFA in the 1990s, said that the English game was lagging thirty years behind the rest of Europe, he knew what he was talking about. And we can, too, bear in mind the words of Matthias Ohms, the guru of Eintracht Frankfurt, when he said how the German game freed itself from the tyranny of the kick-and-rush game...

It was all simple background stuff, it should have already been crammed into their heads by their mid-teens, but it never hurt to go over old ground.

- ...in Argentina's game against Greece in the 1990 World Cup, Maradona's goal was the result of an extended row of wall passes; indeed, Caniggia himself hit the bar after a wall pass...

He stopped. The lecturer's sixth sense told him something was amiss. He glanced slyly to his right. There was Gascoigne, right by him, but unlike the others, who were taking down notes with hamfisted earnestness, he was looking at something in his lap, beneath the table. It looked like a book. Dewell picked up again, after a discernible beat. Gascoigne had not noticed him.

When the lecture was over and the students gratefully packed up their pens and papers and went off to do some warm-up exercises, Dewell gently stopped Gascoigne.

- A quick word? he said. Gascoigne nodded.

- Now, dear boy, was it my imagination, or were you slightly distracted during my little speech?

Gascoigne flushed horribly.

- Let me see, said Dewell, holding out his hand. Gascoigne fished nervously in his kit-bag and pulled out a dog-eared paperback.

- Hmm. The Idiot. By Dost... Dosto... hmm. Whatever.

He handed it back.

- Gascoigne, this is not a school; it is a university. We do not punish or humiliate. And I have no objection to our undergraduates having any kind of extra-curricular interests, as long as they are legal. And reading-I go against the grain of my colleagues' inclinations-is not a hobby which I would be minded to campaign against. But it is somewhat mal vu, is it not, to bring one's hobby-especially one as proletarian and useless as this-into the lecture hall of a venerable university. Hmm?

Gascoigne, who looked on the point of tears, nodded. Dewell rested a hand on his shoulder.

- We'll forget about this. You're a promising player. Perhaps the most promising of this year's intake. I understand how this places you under pressure. But you must face that pressure, use it to your own advantage. Remember what the immortal Vinnie Jones said: "That which does not destroy me makes me harder."

Gascoigne nodded again.

- This book, said Dewell, is there any football in it?

- I haven't come across any yet, said Gascoigne.

- Well then, said Dewell, with a smile. Gascoigne, too, smiled.

- If it's books you want, there are plenty out there, you know. You could try Jenns Bangsbo's history of Athletico Bilbao; or The Premier League: First Among Equals? by... by...

- Klinsmann, sir.

- Exactly. Or Alberto Parreira's memoirs of coaching Brazil. It's all out there, this rich history; there is always something new to learn in the beautiful game. You see?

- I see.

- Good. Now get into your kit, Gascoigne, said Dewell, patting him. He watched Gascoigne rush off to join his peers, and shook his head.

That evening found Dewell still preoccupied with what had happened. As Simmons approached with the tray, Dewell found himself in the extraordinary position of having to ask him a question whose answer he genuinely wanted to hear.

- Simmons?

- Sir?

- You don't play football yourself, do you? You know, on your days off or anything?

- No, sir.

- No five-a-side?

- No, sir.

- Seven-a-side?

- No, sir.

- No other sports?

- No, sir.

- You know, rugby, cricket, snooker, darts, fishing, running, javelin-throwing, that kind of thing?

- I regret to say, sir, that I have not been blessed with the capacity for prowess in any of those activities. It is a source of some frustration.

- No, no, don't worry about it, it's not what you're here for. But what I want to say is that, um, well, I think I heard someone once say that, um, that for recreation you, er, you, that is to say...

- I read books, sir.

- Exactly. That's the thing. But what I want to know is if, in your opinion, an attachment to reading might... how can I put this... interfere with the development of a talented footballer?

- I couldn't possibly say, sir. A Labbatt's?

- Yes, thank you Simmons. That will be all.

Dewell pulled at his beer miserably. It didn't seem to taste of anything.

gascoigne was in the infirmary, having some physio after a spectacularly late tackle by Dr Turchi. Turchi visited him, as he often did those he had tackled, to show there were no hard feelings.

- You okay, Gazza?

Gascoigne smiled at the familiarity. Turchi pronounced it in the Italian style.

- Yes, Dr Turchi. Should be up and running in a day or two. It's only a scratch.

- Hey, maybe I tackle you better next time, eh? Put you out for a week?

They laughed. Then Turchi noticed the book on Gascoigne's lap.

- You mind?

He picked it up.

- Inferno. By Dante Alighieri. Why you read?

- Er... well, it's jolly good.

Turchi waggled the volume contemptuously in Gascoigne's face.

- You leave offa this shit, okay? It fuck up your game for good. In Italy, only stronzi, only the teste di cazzo read this, you know what I mean?

He tossed the book back to a suddenly despondent Gascoigne. He tapped his head.

- You only got room for one thing in there, and that thing is football. Da beautiful game. Okay?

- Yes, Dr Turchi.

- Say after me: "da beautiful game."

- "The beautiful game," said Gascoigne.

- Good, good. Now you get well. And-he punched Gascoigne on the arm-you be good now.

Turchi, of course, had to have a quiet word with Dewell, who groaned.

- Dear God, it's worse than I thought, he said, and called for the college chaplain.

The chaplain was a timid, ginger-haired man without much practical footballing experience beyond a brief, yet taxing, stint as spiritual adviser to Wolverhampton Wanderers. His function was to direct the students' prayers for victory in what he called "a useful and relevant direction," although how God could answer the competing prayers of opposing teams without inevitable disappointment was something he did not care to think about too much. But, if Gascoigne was in the grip of a spiritual crisis, then it was the chaplain's responsibility to pull him out of it. After that there was only Hackenfasser, with his thick spectacles, his psychoanalytic gobbledegook, and a lamentable track record among his charges of suicide, and voluntary rustication.

The chaplain tapped on Gascoigne's door. At least the oak was unsported. A good sign.

- Come, said Gascoigne, who looked up from his bed with surprise.

- I'm the college chaplain. But please call me Brian.

- Hello, Brian. Do have a seat.

Brian sat down in the only chair in the room and looked about him.

- Gosh, you've got a lot of books, he said, looking at a shelf with perhaps a dozen battered titles on it.

- Just a hobby, said Gascoigne.

- I know, I know, said Brian. I like to read myself, you know. There's something about it, isn't there?

- Yes, said Gascoigne uncertainly.

The chaplain rooted around beneath his gown. For a horrible moment Gascoigne thought he was going to do something indecent. He'd heard about the clergy. He'd read about the clergy.

- In fact, said Brian, I've got something for you that you might like.

He finally pulled a book from his jacket pocket.

- It's one of my favourites.

Gascoigne looked at it apologetically.

- Actually, I've read it.

The chaplain looked disappointed. No wonder: this was his only plan, and now it was scuppered.

- I think you'll find that just about everyone here has read Fever Pitch.

- Oh, have they?

- Well, it is a set text. It's the only set text, I think.

- Oh. Brian looked about him, at the unlovely room.

- You've got a spanking set here, he said hopelessly.

- Yes, it's very snug, said Gascoigne.

- What's that you're reading?

- Michel de Montaigne. A philosopher.

- Oh good. Well, the philosophy of the game is important. The spiritual side, you know.

- Indeed. (Gascoigne was alarmed at how easy it was to be rude to this man.)

Brian stood up and flapped his arms a couple of times against his sides.

- Well, must dash. Give us a call when something's on your mind.

- Yes, bye, said Gascoigne; pleased that the irritating man had gone, and above all pleased that he had not been asked to recite the last sentence of Montaigne's that he had read: "Never trust a man whose mind is full of sport; for that means there will never be room for aught else of import."

only two terms in, and Gascoigne was in a mess like this! His term project, "Stand Up and Be Counted: All-seater Stadia, the Taylor Report, and the Decline of Hooliganism," was dreadfully stalled; and his game had, to everyone's observation, gone dramatically off the boil. The news that Gascoigne had had a short story and a poem-neither of them, even at an allegorical level, having anything to do with football-published in some oiky little townie rag was, it turned out, the last straw.

- I think a break for you, until you sort yourself out, said Dewell.

- You're throwing me out, aren't you?

- No, we're not. We're just giving you a little time to think about your priorities, that's all. Do you want to take this place seriously or don't you? We'll have you back whenever you want to come back. Maybe a spell in the real world will sort you out. People within these walls can become... cut off.

He sighed deeply: so deeply that it was nearly a sob. Gascoigne, too, nearly sobbed, heavy with the burden of his betrayal. He had not meant it to be like this, and as he packed his trunk, later in the evening, wondering what on earth he was going to tell his family, the ever-faithful Debbi, he thought of the world beyond the college gates, a world where the wind blew fiercer, where snarling aesthetes padded through their murky Unterwelt of literature and art; unknowable, terrifying, and dark. Debbi would not understand. He could hardly understand it himself.

There was a soft tap at his door. Gascoigne opened it and was puzzled to see the willowy figure of Simmons standing respectfully in the hall.

- You're that chap who serves at High Table, aren't you?

- That's right, sir, said Simmons, giving his name.

- Come in, said Gascoigne.

- I won't, sir; but I have heard of your... difficulty. If I may take the liberty of doing so, I would like to present you with a small token which might lighten your mood and make the vicissitudes of the outside world easier to bear.

And he handed Gascoigne a book.

- Why... why... I'm sorry, but I've heard of this man, but never got round to reading him.

- I have found it, on a personal level, highly amusing, and occasionally even instructive.

- I shall treasure it, Simmons. This is too kind.

- We readers have to stick together, said Simmons. Not a word, if you please, to the authorities.

- My lips are sealed, said Gascoigne, and as he looked up from the book he found that the butler had disappeared without the trace of a footfall, as if he had been no more than a gentle dream. And-as he hardly had any more packing to do-he lay down on the bed and began to read this book, with its absurd title winking above the name of the half-familiar author, pausing only to wonder: did one pronounce it "woadhouse" or "woodhouse"?