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It was a present, she said. From her to me. She doesn’t normally give exes presents, she said, but she couldn’t resist this one because it was so appropriate. She was going to post it, then resolve turned to apathy and she shoved it in the case with my other stuff. I put it on and we said goodbye. She didn’t come to the front door. I pulled the door shut behind me, and set out, in my souvenir T-shirt, with my bag of debris, across the blazing pavements of south London.
The plan was to go by train from south London to east London to attend a football match, then to go to Paddington in west London to catch my train back to the West Country. Various engineering works in progress meant that the first leg of the journey was fraught with difficulties, anxieties, dashed hopes and bus-replacement services. The District Line train from Bow to Plaistow, when it came, was a sort of Black Hole of Calcutta on wheels.
At the pub for the pre-match drink there were about 100 people outside on the pavement and inside the queue for the bar was five deep. The lads, when I found them, were in the garden. They were discussing Frank Lampard’s mum’s funeral. ‘So Frank’s best mate Didier Drogba wasn’t invited, then,’ said one. Eyebrows shot up all round. ‘Why was that?’ we said. ‘They were afraid he might dive in the box,’ he said.
I carried the suitcase the mile to the ground, forced it and myself through the turnstile and carried it up to my seat in row X. The thing was like a bloody millstone around my neck. ‘What’s in the bag?’ said the man in the next seat. ‘Lucas Neil’s wages,’ I told him.
It was the last game of the season. After the final whistle I took up my case and headed for the West Country. On the way to the Tube station, I passed another pub. About 500 people were standing outside in the sun. Reggae was booming out from inside. If I was quick there was just about time for one more.
Inside the pub everyone was dancing with their arms in the air and singing as they danced. Even the bar staff. The music was that old skinhead classic, ‘Pressure Drop’ by Toots and the Maytals. It was a proper party — what I believe is referred to as a right old East End knees-up. And it’s not often these days I find myself at one of those. I ordered a pint of lager and downed it in three.
I don’t know whether it was the lager, or the sun, or the music, or being back among London crowds after eight months of village life, or the emotional backwash of that morning’s parting, or her integrity and essential kindness, or my carelessness with them, I couldn’t say. But I put down my sad suitcase beside the door and sort of mentally abandoned ship. I decided to stay. I could go no further. I ordered another lager and drank and danced solipsistically beside my suitcase until I was the quietly stupefied centre of a frantic maelstrom.
It must have been about midnight when I finally rested the suitcase on her front doorstep and pressed the intercom buzzer with my forehead.
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