Provided You Don’t Kiss Me by Duncan Hamilton

Author:Duncan Hamilton [Hamilton, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2008-09-03T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wrestling Sigmund Freud

I travelled with Nottingham Forest on the team coach – a great privilege. Most other provincial reporters I knew who covered a team in the First Division had to make their own way to matches. Managers were generally reluctant to let a journalist onto the coach, thinking there was too much of a risk of them hearing what they shouldn’t.

Clough took pity on me. I’d never passed a driving test; in fact, I’d only ever taken a handful of lessons, and so relied almost exclusively for a while on public transport or the benevolence of others. I asked him whether I could cadge a ride one August Bank Holiday when there was a reduced train service. He thought about it for a moment, and then agreed, but with a proviso: ‘You have to be on this coach for every match. You miss a game, I kick you off – that’s only fair.’

Clough sat in a single seat right behind the driver. The seat reminded me of a throne. I was usually in the window seat just behind him and to his left. He was nearly always the last to board the coach – and woe betide anyone who was later than him. If you were unfortunate to find him already in his seat, the engine of the coach running, you’d get a burst of ‘You’re keeping me waiting …’

Albert, the coach driver and kit man, had the patience of a saint. Clough would regularly provide a running commentary about his driving. He was always going either too fast or too slow. Sometimes, according to Clough, he was in the wrong lane or hadn’t gone through a light on amber when he ought to have done. Clough complained if Albert overestimated the journey time and began to cut his speed. ‘You’re slow-timing it, Albert,’ he’d yell. ‘I told you it wouldn’t take this long to get here.’

I used to have a bet with myself on the exact minute of the outward and homeward journeys when Clough would tell Albert, ‘Hey, get a fag on. I like to smoke by proxy.’ Half an hour seemed about the norm. Clough had given up smoking long before I got to know him. He used to smoke Romeo Y Julieta cigars. Albert would light up, and the smoke from his cigarette wafted towards Clough, who threw his head back and sniffed the air. On these trips Albert smoked like a laboratory beagle.

Albert and I used to play pool together. He was full of juicy gossip. He told me why it was that Forest often went to Scarborough to train on the beach or walk along the front. I naively believed that it was for the benefit of the sea air. ‘No,’ said Albert. ‘Peter Taylor’s got a flat there. He won’t hire a furniture van, so we take his stuff up in the team coach. Last week it was a wardrobe. The time before, it was a couple of chairs and a table.

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