The Charlton Men

Paul Breen

Description

All’s fair in love and football. 

‘The Charlton Men’, the first part of a trilogy set in South London, combines literary fiction with a love of football. Set in the historic surrounds of Greenwich and Charlton, the novel interweaves the rich heritage of the area’s past with contemporary themes of social disenfranchisement and a search for meaning.

Set in the aftermath of the 2011 London riots, the story follows two “Charlton Men” as their lives become intertwined with the fortunes of their local football club. Lance, a Londoner, has followed Charlton his whole life – from childhood right up until his return from Afghanistan, scarred by war and feeling abandoned after the sacrifices he has made for his country. Fergus, an Irishman, comes to London to get a fresh start on life and finds himself falling in love not once, but twice – first with the club and the riots, and second with a mysterious Marilyn Monroe lookalike whose darker side ripples beneath the surface. Conflict arises, however, when his friend Lance falls for the same woman and the two men find themselves pitted against one another as competitors for her affection.

Sujets

• Urban
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783081769
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CHARLTON MEN THE
THE CHARLTON MEN
PAUL BREEN
The Charlton Men
THAMES RIVER PRESS An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC) Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press ( www.anthempress.com ) First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by THAMES RIVER PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA
www.thamesriverpress.com
© Paul Breen 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78308-166-0
This title is also available as an eBook
This work of fiction has been written in and inspired by South East London. It is dedicated to my wife Sarah, our cat Gobbolino - who can now lay claim to being a writer’s cat - my friends and family.
At a broader level, it is dedicated to the community and family of Charlton Athletic Football Club, our supporters and our players, including those I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing, or seeing in action, but whose spirit lives on in The Valley, Floyd Road, SE7 now and forevermore.
A special word goes to Chris Powell and the team of 2011/12 whose actions and achievements fully captured a sense of the spirit which defines Charlton as a place and a football club.
Lastly, thanks to all at Thames River Press - editors and publishers -for helping to bring this story to print.
1 The Bare Bones of History
L ondon faced the greatest fight of her life, as dark waves of danger enclosed the Thames River’s tremulous coil. The face of night was black and blue, reflected in the water, as if bruised and battered after a domestic row. On the gates of Greenwich, words blazed in the tranquil moonlight, softening sores with caresses of wisdom, knowledge, and evocation. Beneath these cliffs of history, rested two refugees from the day’s rage.
‘ Tam Minerva quam Marte ,’ they read together.
‘Motto of England’s sailors,’ Lance’s voice cut through the silence, short and sharp as the sword on London’s coat of arms. ‘As much by Minerva as by Mars: as much by wisdom as by war, as much by genius as by courage. But tonight it’s like nobody’s listening.’
Fergus looked up, again, at the names of the two Gods set against maritime images in the moonlight. ‘Maybe it’s no wonder there’s so much fighting in the world. Chocolate’s always going to come before common sense.’
‘Like women and the beautiful game,’ Lance added.
‘No wonder people say all’s fair in love and football.’
Behind, beyond and all around, Greenwich’s haunting greenery, armoured in moonlight, stood pristine as a watercolour from the 1800s. Tonight, as the Thames raced leathery-black and jewelled as a title belt, this wasn’t the city of the 1800s, 1900s, any hundreds. Those had been swallowed up by the monstrous appetite of a 2011AD dragon feeding off 3D TVs.
Again the refugees struggled for words, feeling foreign in tonight’s country. The one on the right, an Englishman, said this wasn’t typical.
‘Not the heat, nor the madness that’s come with it.’
To his left, the flame-headed Irishman sat in shock.
‘Wasn’t what I expected from my first nights in London.’
The newcomer’s name was Fergus Sharkey. Looking out on the river with wondrous, wandering eyes of green marble, he drifted into snapshots of his journey towards a fresh start across the water.
Like thousands of forgotten faces in photo albums, he had caught a boat from Dun Laoghaire to Wales, and followed the ghost trail of immigrants on a train across a less-disputed British border, down to the great city of London.
There he would be anonymous; scattering ashes of the past. Since childhood he had dreamt of a life where seas and windows became one. If he couldn’t have that, then the Thames would be a fine substitute.
Deep in thought, and in the whispers of an unsettled tide, Fergus was miles away as his new friend spoke once more.
‘It’s been a freak show of a night, even for this place.’
The Englishman, with golden locks, and good looks tempered by a heavy sadness in his eyes, made an odd companion for somebody from a place where there’s no love lost for soldiers.
But people get drawn together, forging friendships in unlikely places.
‘When you’re far away from home, serving in a foreign country, every night feels like the end of the world.’
‘Like tonight?’ Fergus asked.
‘You’re sitting in silence, waiting for the next attack.’
He could still hear the crackle of shrapnel, he claimed, from the evening’s explosions, a couple of hours ago, a few miles down the road.
Whirlwinds of testosterone had swept through the surrounding suburbs, as Greenwich stayed pure, untouched, unmolested.
‘As calm as the Armagh mountains,’ Fergus whispered.
Everything was much the same as when he had arrived, the day before. This green bay, home of time, receptacle of ghosts, line of demarcation between latitudes, had stayed as white and shiny as in the hour of its first discovery.
To his left stood the glass-fronted apartments where he had rented a room. Glass, glass everywhere , he thought, and no mountains anywhere within sight . Canary Wharf’s sparkling heights dominated the horizon, hard as composite armour and lit up like slot machines at the seaside. Rising high above trees and water, they punctured the bog-black sky; torching clouds, bleeding flame and blue dye into the Thames. Maybe in their own way, they were mountains. Glass mountains .
Further uphill, on the slopes of Greenwich Park, in the moonlight, he could decipher the silhouette of the Old Royal Observatory.
Here in Greenwich, he had learned that everything’s old . Like the Old Royal Naval College, stationed on the riverside, directly behind them; a white stone fortress which seemed a fragment broken off a street in Rome or Athens and transported, like a ship inside a bottle, to the edge of the Thames.
‘It’s cool living here but it’s not home .’
This confused the Irishman. ‘Where’s home?’
He gestured eastwards. ‘Over there.’
His grey eyes changed to a pair of blue dolphins swimming, as he swept a hand through the blonde mane he had been growing since coming back from Afghanistan; trying to erase any traces of his soldier’s past. At least when sitting down, all you noticed was the top half, as it wasn’t so easy to disguise the prosthetic souvenir below his kneecap.
‘I grew up in Charlton,’ he said, going back to before any battles started, ‘in a brown-brick council house, with a whisky-bottle-shaped garden, and a big attic room.’
Again, as several times today, a faraway gaze masked his features in an expression which transformed his face to a pint of Guinness. Golden blonde upwards from the brow. Bitter black beneath.
‘After my parents died, the Council took it back, coz you can’t hand your home down to your kids in this fucking country,’ he gargled bitterness. ‘So I went off to fight an idiot’s guide to war, while a pack o’ pen-pushers gave our house to somebody else.’
‘Must have been hard for you guys,’ Fergus tried to offer sympathy. ‘Did you ever find out who’s there now?’
‘Don’t know who, and don’t want to, coz I’d probably go out and burn down the city as well.’ He was angry, as blood pumped fiercely through his forehead. ‘The way things are, I wouldn’t be surprised if Afghan kids are sleeping in my old room.’
Strange, Fergus thought, though decided not to say it. England’s always fighting everybody else’s wars, instead of fixing its own problems.
‘I miss that old house, but this is okay.’
The Irishman cast his eyes east. ‘Sure it’s not far away.’
‘Might as well be a hundred miles,’ Lance corrected him. ‘Greenwich is different to Charlton, same as they’re both different to Lewisham, Deptford or anywhere else in this part o’ the world.’
When he spoke about these places, stitched together by the Thames’ creeks and inlets, you would swear they were scattered out as freely as villages in Ireland’s border country. But, aside from the park’s sweeping greenery, Fergus could see nothing except for an endless tide of stone and glass. Already he was feeling homesick, as out of place amidst tonight’s riots as Lance must have felt on the first evening hunkered up inside a bunker, far from home, holding a machine gun. Perhaps in time they would talk of those days, nights and war wounds, as they had been doing in the afternoon, before the riot started.
‘Everything’s the same all over London,’ Lance insisted, ‘even the parts we can’t see from here in the south east. Battersea’s different from Brixton, and Croydon’s a world apart from Chelsea.’
‘Never been to Chelsea, but watched them in a few cup finals.’
‘Sometimes