Chapter 808: The Gate
[Dulwich to Beckenham. Friday 20 July 2018. 07:52.]
"You are not driving me in."
"I am driving you in."
"Jessica, I have got a car."
"You have got a car with 6 weeks of dust on it and no MOT since June, and there are 3 photographers on your road." She pulled out. "I checked at 7."
"There are photographers on my road?"
"There were 3. There are now 5." She did not look over. "Do not turn round."
I turned round.
There was a man on a moped at the end of East Dulwich Road with a camera bag across his back, sat with his feet down, not going anywhere.
"Sit forward and drink your coffee," Jessica said. "You are on the front of 2 papers and it is the silly season and you knocked England out of a World Cup. This is the price of the ticket and it lasts about a month."
"You are enjoying this."
"I am 4 hours short of sleep and I am driving my own client to Beckenham because he cannot be trusted with a bus." She indicated. "I am not enjoying anything."
Then she said, without any change in her voice at all, "Your licence came through."
I did not say anything for about 3 seconds.
"Say that again."
"UEFA signed it off on the 11th. It went to the FA, the FA wrote to me because you were unreachable in Voronezh, and the certificate is sat in a drawer in my office because I was not putting that in the post."
"The 11th."
"The 11th of July." She checked the mirror. "The day you knocked England out. They ratified your Pro Licence and you beat them on the same afternoon and neither side has mentioned it to the other. I have thought about that a great deal."
I sat in that car and looked out of the window at Camberwell.
15 months I have done this job on a dispensation and a deadline. The FA gave me one the way they gave Paul Ince one, and told me to go and get the badge while I did the work.
So I did it in the cracks. Modules in Burton on a Tuesday with a Carabao tie on the Wednesday. An assessment 9 days after Wembley. A written paper on a coach on the M6 with Marcus asleep next to me.
"Jessica."
"Mm."
"The Champions League."
"Yes," she said. "I know. That is why I am telling you at 8 in the morning instead of on Monday."
Because here is the bit that would have finished me.
The Premier League gave me grace. The Premier League can.
UEFA club licensing does not. You do not take a side into the group stage of the European Cup without a Pro Licence, and there is no dispensation and no grace and no letter anybody can write.
If that certificate had not come through, Crystal Palace would have played the first Champions League match in the 113 year history of the club, and I would have been sat in the stand.
"You never told me it was that close," I said.
"It was not that close. You passed in May." Jessica took the roundabout. "But you have spent 6 weeks in another country, and I was not explaining paperwork to you down a phone line to Voronezh.
"So I sat on it. Now you have got it, and now I have told you.
"Congratulations. You are qualified. Try not to look so surprised."
We came down the lane at 8 and I got about 40 yards of hedge before I saw the barrier and something went out of my shoulders that had been in them since Moscow.
There is a gate at our training ground with a barrier and a hut, and there has been a man called Ron in that hut for 19 years.
Ron is 71. He has cleaned that barrier with a cloth every morning of them. He was there when I came in as an under 18s coach with a bag over my shoulder and no idea what I was doing, and he was there the morning after Lyon, and he has never once called me anything but Danny.
He came out of that hut before Jessica had stopped the car.
"Well," Ron said. "Look at the state of that."
"Morning, Ron."
"You have gone a colour."
"It is called the sun."
"It is called a World Cup final." He put both hands on the roof of Jessica’s car and leaned down to the window and did not care whose car it was. "Danny."
"Ron."
"My grandson is 9." He stopped. Started again. "He watched every one. Every single one, that boy, and he cannot say the names and he has learned them anyway. He has got a Morocco shirt off the internet. His mother is spitting about the money."
"Which name is on the back?"
"Bono," Ron said. "The goalkeeper."
I sat in that car for a second.
"Ron, tell him the goalkeeper is called Yassine and he is the bravest man I have ever worked with."
"I will tell him that."
"And tell him I said hello."
"He will not sleep." Ron came off the roof and hit the button and the barrier went up. "Go on. They are all in. And Danny."
"Yeah."
"You did right, son. Whatever they are printing."
Beep.
He went back in his hut and picked up his cloth.
Jessica drove up that lane and did not say anything for about 20 seconds, which for her is a monologue.
"That," she said, "is worth more than the 4 phone calls."
"You said Monday."
"I said Monday and I meant Monday. I am making an observation." She pulled up outside the building. "Out."
"Are you coming in?"
"I am going home to sleep for 6 hours and then I am going to spend the weekend doing a job you are not paying me enough for." She reached across and opened my door from the inside, which is possibly the rudest thing anybody has ever done to me. "Monday. 9 o’clock. Do not read anything."
The doors at Beckenham are glass and they are heavy, and I have opened them about 700 times.
Sarah was stood behind the desk with her arms folded before I had got through them.
Sarah Okonjo has run that building since 2016. She has a lanyard she never wears, a laminated seating plan for the canteen that nobody is allowed to change, and a way of saying my name that tells you exactly how much trouble I am in.
"Daniel."
"Morning."
"3 weeks."
"6 weeks."
"6 weeks," she said, "and you did not once ring me to ask how the building was."
"I rang you 40 times."
"You rang about players." She came out from behind that desk. "You did not once ask me how the building was."
"How is the building, Sarah?"
"It is fine. Thank you for asking."
Then she hugged me, hard, in a reception with 4 people watching, which she has done twice.
She stood back and looked at me and her eyes had gone and she was furious about it.
"Right," she said. "Well."
"Sarah."
"No." She put a hand up. "Do not.
"I have had 6 weeks of your mother ringing me because you would not answer. I have had 2 members of staff crying in that canteen on Sunday night. And this morning I have got a lad from a paper trying to get in the car park pretending to be a physio.
"So we are going to have a normal day, and you are going to start by clearing that."
And she went behind the desk and lifted a grey plastic post tray onto the counter with both hands, and put it down in front of me, and it was full.
6 weeks of post.
That is what nobody tells you about going away. There is a tray, and it fills, and nobody else can open it because it has your name on it.
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.