Chapter 804: Back
I had no vote on the next manager of that country. I had no say in who plays, who is called up, who gets a contract, who goes to a European club in August and who does not.
Not one of those 23 men was mine to help after Thursday. Achraf will be sold or he will not. Youssef will get his leg right or he will not. Somebody will pick Badr again or nobody will, and I will read about all of it on a phone in Croydon like everybody else.
6 weeks is 6 weeks. That is what I signed and that is what they got, and a man who tells 23 professionals otherwise on his way to an airport is lying to them to make himself feel better.
So I did not.
Benatia last, because I am a coward.
"Coach."
"Skipper."
"No." He shook his head. "Not any more. That word is finished."
He got hold of the back of my head with one hand, the way he has done to about 9 of them on grass in the last 6 weeks, put his forehead on mine, and said 4 words in Arabic that I have never had translated and never will.
Bounou I got by a lift, and I had nothing for him in Moscow and 3 days to find something.
"On the 94th minute. When you came up for that corner." I had to stop. "You are a goalkeeper and you ran 100 yards to try and win a World Cup with your head. I am going to be telling people about that when I am 60."
He did not say anything for a moment.
"It hit the post, coach."
"I know it hit the post."
"Yes," he said. "It hit the post." And he shook my hand and got in the lift.
Hakimi shook my hand like a man at a bank.
"I am still angry with you."
"I know."
"Good," he said, and walked off, and that is where we left it and that is where it should be left.
Harit hugged me so hard he lifted me off the carpet.
And Ziyech said, "Do not sign a right winger," and was gone before I got my mouth open.
Nadia was in the lobby with a folder against her chest and a lanyard she had been wearing since the 5th of June, and she was not there for me.
She was there because 23 players and a federation delegation were going through that lobby in 40 minutes and every one of them was her problem until the wheels left the ground.
She got me at the doors on the way past.
"42 days," she said.
"42 days."
"You were late 9 times."
"I was late 4 times."
"9, coach." She put the folder down by her feet, which I have not seen her do once. "I have run 6 tournaments. Nobody has ever asked me what my second name is."
"I asked you in week 1."
"In a car park in Voronezh." She picked the folder back up, because there was a squad coming down behind me. "Go home, coach."
She did not come out to the coach. She had 23 more of us to move and she went back to work, which is the most Nadia thing that woman has ever done.
[RAK 1204, Casablanca to London Heathrow. 20:05.]
The federation put all 9 of us in first class, which has never happened to me before and has not happened since.
Bray could not work out how to make the seat flat and would not ask.
"It is a button, Alan."
"I know it is a button."
"There are 4 buttons."
"I am aware there are 4 buttons, Rebecca."
Marcus photographed the menu. Steele put his shoes off and his feet up, said "Aye" to nobody, and slept for 3 hours and 40 minutes.
My mother was next to me in 2A, being brought things by a young man in a waistcoat and hating it in a way that made her about 20 years old.
"He has brought me a hot towel, Daniel."
"Take the towel, Mum."
"What am I to do with a hot towel? I have not done anything."
Emma had flown home on the Sunday night, straight out of Moscow, because she had a piece due on the 24th and because she has never in 3 years let a thing of mine get in the way of a thing of hers.
She had sent me one message on the Tuesday, which I got 5 hours late because there was no signal in that city.
I have seen the road. Do not you dare come home miserable.
So it was my mother, 2A, 4 hours over the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, and about 40 minutes in she put her book down.
"What is in the box?"
"Which box?"
"Daniel."
"How do you know about the box?"
"Because you have carried it through 2 airports like a man holding a bomb," she said, "and I have watched you not open it twice."
So I got it down out of the locker.
It was not the medal. The medal is in a case and I know exactly where that is.
It was a wooden thing about the size of a book that Mustapha put in my hands in a hotel corridor on Wednesday night without a word of explanation, and then went off down that corridor with a skip.
I got it open over the Bay of Biscay.
Inside, pressed flat between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper, gone brown and papery at the edges, were the flowers off the bus.
All of them. Every single one he could reach.
He had gone round that top deck on his knees with a kit bag while a city sang at us, and then sat somewhere for 2 days pressing carnations between greaseproof paper like a Victorian, a 54-year-old kit man, and told nobody.
There was a piece of hotel paper folded on top in handwriting I did not know.
For the office in London. So they can see.
My mother read it leaning over my arm, and then sat back in her seat and looked straight in front of her at the bulkhead for a long time.
"He is the kit man," I said.
"I know who he is. He carried my bag on Monday and he would not let go of it."
She did not say anything else about it. She picked her book back up and did not turn a page for about 20 minutes, and I put the lid back on the box.
I did not sleep.
I sat in a seat that turns into a bed, over the Bay of Biscay, with a medal in the overhead locker and a country’s citizenship in a document wallet and 40 pressed flowers on my knees, and I could not tell you one useful thing I thought about for 3 hours.
Somewhere over Brittany the cabin lights came up.
Bing.
"Cabin crew, 10 minutes to landing."
My mother put her seat forward, folded the hot towel she had not used, and gave it back to the young man in the waistcoat with a thank you he was not expecting.
Then she put her hand over the top of mine on the armrest and left it there and did not look at me, which is where I get it from.
We came down over the reservoirs at 10 past 11 at night and it was raining. Properly raining. That flat grey London rain with no weather in it at all.
Wet black roads and orange lights and the M25 going nowhere in both directions.
42 days, 7 matches, a final, a parade, a throne room and an honorary citizenship I did not ask for, and out of that window there was a Thursday night in west London with the wipers going on a lorry.
The wheels came down.
Hnnn.
Flaps. That noise the air makes on them. A row of blue lights coming up out of the dark to meet us, and the ground getting close the way it does, and Bray saying something to Marcus about a car park 3 rows back.
I put my forehead against the window.
Home.
Chk.
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.