Chapter 31
It was Friday evening and Kitty, Shazza, Rory, Tom and Tara stood in a huddle, under the floodlights, trying to focus on their match.
‘Right,’ said Tara, hands on her hips. ‘We’re playing the Sallynoggin Soldiers, right? Not known to play a beautiful game but famous for their ability to declare football war…’
Kitty felt even more nervous, trying to remember everything Billy had told her. Focus. Breathe. Be in the moment. Think about nothing but the ball. Feel the game.
‘Concentrate on the tactics we’ve discussed,’ instructed Tara. ‘Rory, I’m going to be passing the ball to you to score goals, okay? Tom, your job is to get balls back into possession and, Shazza, you’re in defence when Rory’s got the ball. If he loses possession, you need to get it back to him.’ She fixed Shazza with a glare of such intensity that there was a collective bristling to attention. ‘You hear me? You get the ball back to Rory so he can score.’ She turned to Kitty. ‘And you’re to… you’re to… support the guys, pass the ball to any of us and we will try to score.’
They all nodded, clear with Tara’s instructions. Apart from Kitty, who looked over to the stands, where Billy was sitting in the front row. He’d made it, she thought, surprised and pleased, as she smiled over at him. He gave her a thumbs up and then tapped his head, urging her to focus. She tapped her head in return. Billy then flapped his arms and sucked in his mouth and crossed his eyes.
‘What?’ she called over.
‘Float like a butterfly,’ he shouted back. ‘Be a butterfly!’
Kitty laughed and, weirdly, for the first time, her nerves were completely gone. She was smiling as they walked onto the centre of the pitch.
‘Good luck,’ said Tom.
‘You too,’ she said.
The referee, who was short with rumpled socks and massive spectacles which dominated his face, blew the whistle, and Tara led the action, booting the ball down the pitch to Rory, who deftly caught it with his foot, and Kitty saw him trying to look for a way through the Sallynoggin Soldiers’ defence. They were all huge players, three men and two women, all built like the Galtee Mountains and faces as though they’d been moulded out of clay, all lumpy with tiny, hidden-away eyes. One of them crashed into Rory, taking the legs from under him, and Rory crashed to the ground but was up again immediately, and somehow still had the ball. He darted around the Soldier and then swung his leg back to kick, but just before he made an impact, he kicked it in an entirely different direction, towards Tom, who then kicked the ball up the pitch, straight towards the goal, and then there was Rory again, who shot it straight into the net.
The Sandycove Seafarers began jumping up and down, cheering. Kitty finally understood why proper footballers celebrated their goals with dances and handstands and kissing and hugging. It was the best feeling in the world. Even Tara was smiling and Shazza was performing a kind of Saturday Night Fever routine, and Rory joined in, the two of them disco-dancing in the middle of the pitch, much to the disgust of the Soldiers.
Now, it seemed, it was war, and for the rest of the first half, the Soldiers found their groove. Kitty never managed to gain possession of the ball and was tripped up by one of the opposition. It was their turn to celebrate a goal, running at each other, bouncing off each other’s chests and making grunting sounds. And then, just before the referee blew his whistle for half-time, the Sallynoggin Soldiers scored another goal – 2-1.
Tara still looked determined, as the five-a-siders gathered. ‘We’re not going to let those big feckers beat us,’ she said. ‘I went to school with two of them, and they had as much sporting prowess as a bag of turf.’ Her face was set, her jaw clenched, her eyes steely. ‘We have to win. One of those bags of turf, Lorraine Houlihan, once stole my lunch from me. It was ham made by my mam… God, I’ve never forgotten it. And I was starving that day.’
‘I suggest we use their size against them,’ said Rory. ‘We just keep running around them, be so quick that they can’t see us or the ball.’
Tara looked at him. ‘That’s your plan?’
‘I think it’s quite a good one,’ said Shazza, smiling at Rory.
‘Thanks, Shazza,’ he said, smiling back.
‘I think we focus on the ball,’ suggested Kitty. ‘Don’t think about the other team, stay in the game, the moment, just think about the ball being like energy being passed around…’
Tara thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Well,’ said Kitty, ‘I think we just need to breathe and take a moment to hear the sounds, to notice the mud on our boots and to stay in the now…’
‘Now is all we’ve got,’ said Tara. ‘Right, COME ON!’
The second half began and that’s exactly what they did. Kitty focused on her breathing and when one of the Soldiers came towards her, she heard his big, snuffly, nostrilly breaths, like an out-of-condition man-mountain, all size and no actual skills, and away she went, ducking around him, seeing the clods of earth which had been dug up by their studs, the blades of grass glittering under the floodlights, feeling her heart beating in her chest, the breeze on her skin as she ran towards Tom. Then, just as the man-mountain bore down on her, she passed the ball, giving it the slightest bit of topspin, and watched as it flicked over to Tom, who caught it, turned around, and kicked it to Rory, who then tapped it straight into the back of the net.
This time, they didn’t celebrate, the Sandycove Seafarers were back in the game immediately, focused on the ball, their faces serious as Buddhist monks during daily prayers. One of the mountains tackled Tara as she had run out from the goal to kick a ball. For a moment, she was tossed to the ground and a shout of ‘Lorraine! Jesus!’ echoed around the stand, but the referee missed it all as he had been fiddling with his socks. But then Tara was up, and running with the ball, the wind in her hair, an expression on her face which Kitty knew was when she was in her special place, when she was winning. She passed the ball to Shazza, who manoeuvred it to Rory, who ducked around one of the Soldiers, then another, and was just about to be tackled again, when he tapped it to Kitty.
Blade of grass, she told herself. Breathe breaths, keep on breathing breaths. And she did, as she tapped the ball forward and watched as it circumnavigated around the woman mountain who was bearing down on her, but Kitty was too quick, and she had the ball again, and there was the goal, looming ahead of her, another Soldier glaring at her, his arms outstretched, and Kitty had no choice but to kick it again. Her heart was beating in her ears, the far-off sound of people shouting her name, and this time, just as her foot made contact, she remembered to give it that little flick and suddenly time stood still, the world stopped turning, it was like the volume of the universe had been silenced as the ball lifted into the air in a perfect arc and looked for one moment to be going over the goal, but it kept its trajectory and neatly, perfectly, like Cupid’s arrow or a bolt of electricity, slipped straight under the bar, and flew into the net.
The referee blew the whistle and it was all over. The Sandycove Seafarers had won 3-2. And now the disco-dancing began again. On the sideline, the five of them began throwing some moves, Shazza was singing, ‘Feel the beat of our tamboreeeeen!’ And they were laughing and dancing and clapping their hands and shaking their bodies. It was, Kitty reflected later, the least cool celebration ever recorded, but none of them minded.
‘You were magic out there,’ Billy said to Kitty. ‘Like a little rocket. Chip off the old block.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, allowing him to pull her into his arms. She’d spent her life being adamant that she was nothing like him, and now, here she was being pleased and delighted that they shared so much. Tara grabbed her and ruffled her hair roughly, making Kitty laugh.
‘Jesus, this little one is a powerhouse… you’re not leaving the team, right?’ she said. ‘You and Shazza are here to stay.’
Rory and Shazza were still dancing and had by now a choreographed routine. ‘Then we turn, clap, wiggle… over to the right… shimmy down…’ Shazza was saying, and then it was showers and all off to The Island for more celebrations.
In the village, Billy said, ‘I’ll leave you young ones here. You were marvellous out there, the lot of you. Monday? More training?’
Kitty nodded and waved, before turning to her team, who were already heading into the pub. ‘See you, Dad!’ she called back. ‘See you soon!’
Her heart felt full, and she realised that it was the first time in her life she’d felt totally and utterly content, nothing was wrong with anything and, if it was, she didn’t care or it didn’t matter. Because the now was wonderful.