Mark Glanville - The Goldberg Variations

Music was the catalyst for my first trip to Old Trafford. United v Spurs was my reward from Dad for gaining a distinction in my Grade Five clarinet exam. I practically had to run to match his pace as he headed for Holland Park station like an Olympic walker in training.

‘Come on, panther!’

Just as I’d learned to eat and talk fast, so I’d been forced into an unnatural stride.

‘But Dad, the train doesn’t go for an hour and a half!’

I was speaking to my accompanying breeze.

By the time I turned into the station he was standing by the lift gate, green cardboard tickets in his hand, blue 1964 Olympics bag over his shoulder crammed with pink Italian sports papers and our packed lunch. As the lift operator pulled the heavy gates apart we heard the vacuum-cleaner sound of a train leaving the platform. And Dad was away, like a sprinter off his blocks.

‘Dad! The train’s gone!’

I was left, talking to a backpacker. There was no sign of Dad. As I reached the platform he was scurrying awkwardly towards the far end in anticipation of the change at Oxford Circus.

‘Come on!’

He turned round anxiously as another train clattered into the station and I was forced to sprint the final yards. Shuffling along the edge of the platform as the train came to a halt, he secured a position by the opening doors and long-jumped on ahead of the opposition to reserve a couple of seats. A copy of The Times was thrust into my hands. It was several stops before I’d managed to restore it to its original, pre-breakfast form, and I’d barely established that Bobby Charlton was fit when we were at Oxford Circus, leaping like TV detectives through the opening doors into the crime scene.

As the escalator at Euston finally brought us back into the light 1 noticed groups of lads scattered about the concourse, most not wearing scarves, a few sporting tiny badges on which I could just about make out the United ship motif. Scars and earrings complemented the donkey jackets, bovver boots and drainpipe jeans they wore; one or two had United tattoos etched onto the sides of their heads and necks. Amidst them stood a group in dark grey jackets, and creased brown pin-stripes, looking, for all the world, like accountants, but as the mobs dispersed to a far-off platform, they fell into line with them.

‘C-O-C-K-N-E-Y, Cockney Reds will never die!’

The war cry rang round the station.

‘Like something to eat, dear?’

We’d scarcely sat down when out came lumps of food wrapped in silver foil, and a couple of cans of lager. Dad’s wolf-like teeth tore at a chicken breast. He wrenched the metal ring from one of the cans with the sound of a piston firing, and a fine Heineken mist descended over my hair and face.

‘Lovely grub!’ he enthused.

The succulent pink flesh seemed to invite a ferocious response and, as I bit through the bone into the marrow, the shards splintered into the roof of my mouth. I was about to open my beer can politely in the direction of the window-when I noticed a silver-haired man in suit and tie glaring at Dad, so, in filial solidarity, I turned it towards him and released it, to my disappointment, not with a whoosh but an unnoticed phip.

‘Looking forward to it, dear?’

Such a tame phrase could never adequately describe my feelings. I was heading for the seat of my religion.

After Stoke the weather changed. Sheets of pine-needle rain frapped against the window.

‘Here we go!’

Dad stuffed the silver foil and newspaper detritus back into his satchel and began heading up the train, bumping past scruffy, long-haired locals as the terminus came into view. I jumped off the moving locomotive onto a wet platform, the impetus carrying me into a sprint towards the ticket barrier. For once I was ahead of him.

As we made for the bus stop, rivulets of grime ran down the dilapidated brickwork of abandoned buildings. But to me, everything was transformed by association with United. Even the orange and white of the double-decker, so different from the plain red of the London variety, seemed as exotic as the singsong local accent that Dad seemed to hate so much. The bleak urban landscape and scattered housing estates glimpsed from motorway bridges looked like futuristic relatives of the Emerald City.

People began to leave their seats. I looked in vain for floodlights and wondered how long it would be before I saw Old Trafford. It seemed hours before the police let us cross Chester Road, and suddenly, there it was. The headlights embedded in the roof of the stand helped to conceal the stadium’s glory until the last possible moment, the glistening red brick radiant against its sullen surroundings as the clicking turnstiles filtered off the ocean filling the vast forecourt.

‘I’ll see you after the game, darling.’

He gave me one of his my-little-son smiles, and I moved away abruptly in an effort to separate myself from him and the ill-ease it engendered. Once inside the ground with the programme in my hand, I felt I’d arrived. I examined its cover, the figures shaking hands, the number, the date, the fixture, just to make sure it really was happening, then ran up the steps of the stand, unable to wait any longer for my first view of the ground I’d seen so often on television. I was shocked by how much the sight of what was, after all, only a football pitch moved me, as I visualised the heroes and their exploits on the turf. It didn’t matter that most had gone or that those who remained could never repeat their great deeds, that just lent the occasion poignancy, but as the teams ran onto the pitch and chants of ‘U-NI-TED’ rang round the ground, the football itself didn’t seem to matter at all. I felt I belonged here as never before, as I joined in the singing, knowing I was as passionate about this club as anyone there. The state of the art electronic scoreboard read Manchester United o Tottenham Hotspur o. I hoped that would change soon. It did. When Martin Peters put Spurs one up, looking round, I noticed that Mecca had been infiltrated as about one hundred Spurs fans celebrated. A handful of United promptly steamed into them from the back of the Scoreboard End terrace, whacking a few before being arrested. Then Peters scored again, reducing the usually deafening Stretford End to the level of a village church congregation. I joined in the chants of ‘You’re gonna get your fuckin’ ’eads kicked in’, just to give myself a bit of a lift. By the time the referee blew his whistle, Peters had added two more. I had the compensation of seeing the great Bobby Charlton score, but this current team were just men. No mist swept round their feet as they left the pitch with their heads hanging after what turned out to be the worst home defeat of the season.

As Dad phoned his report through, the name Peters was polluting the press box air.

‘Your team were lousy!’

He saw how dejected I was.

‘Sorry about that,’ he smiled sympathetically. ‘Not much of a present.’

I felt bad. I remembered why I was there, and the pleasure it had given Dad to bring me to Old Trafford, but there was no way a fanatical United supporter could have enjoyed it. It was impossible to dissemble. I shrugged my shoulders.

In the pressroom I was introduced, with mutual disinterest, to several of his colleagues. Then a handsome, dark-haired man turned and gave Dad the warmest smile he’d yet received, and all the joy knocked out of me returned. Pat Crerand, one of the gods who looked down on me as I lay asleep at night, had stepped down from his picture. The pain when he squeezed my hand confirmed he was real.

‘They could have done with you today, Paddy.’

‘There’s a lot happening here, Brian.’

‘Do you think we’ll stay up?’

I was surprised to hear myself speak.