Category: Drama Publisher: Christopher Marton
ISBN-10: 0993294006
Type: Fiction
Pages: 298
Copyright: Jun 1 2015
ISBN-13: 9780993294006
A Drama graduate from Huddersfield University, who has a background in IT,this is my first novel and is based on an original screenplay I wrote that was once optioned.
The greatest motivation The darkest desire A darkly-erotic contemporary drama. For 17 year old Kevin, how could life get worse? Living in the wilds of rural North Yorkshire, he has a boring job and a stagnant love life. To top it all, he is the Captain of the world's worst teenage football team - a side for whom a twenty-nil defeat is an improvement in form. When his motorbike needs expensive repairs after a near fatal road accident, Kevin takes a desperate gamble. He answers an advert in a local newspaper, and enters into a Faustian pact with the mysterious, sexy Rosemary, a star performer in her specialised field. Rosemary needs fit young males for her films. Kevin has discovered a way to solve all his troubles at once. Soon, he has all the exciting sex he needs and his highly-motivated football team are crushing all before them on the pitch. But, off the pitch, his troubles are only just starting ...
Excerpt
Kevin carefully clipped the square out of the inside back
page of the Gazette. It contained little more than a
paragraph, but – like many initially innocuous events in
history – he was all too aware of the momentous story behind
it.
“THORMANTON SPRING LATE SHOCK AGAINST WELLTHORPE!”
blared the modest headline. Below was the concisely-edited
match report. There was something patronising about giving
the typecast duffers, of the Salton and District Under 18
League, top billing, for such a modest accomplishment. Kevin
smiled at the thoughts he anticipated going through the sports
editor’s head. Let’s give these losers their time in the Sun
before normal service is resumed as soon as possible. What
did the lines to that old Beatle’s song go? “He didn’t
notice that the lights had changed.”
“Thormanton, for so long the eternal wooden-spoonists
of the Salton and District Under 18 League, sprung the
surprise of the weekend by gaining a late 1-0 victory over
rivals Wellthorpe.”
Robert Swales and Nick Cammack had been earmarked for the
great experiment. Kevin had formulated a theory of having
two defenders stick closely to Wellthorpe’s star midfielder
Duncan Rothwell to man-mark him out of the game. Robert
would apply his bulky physique to being Rothwell’s shadow and
sitting tight on him and giving him no room to manoeuvre.
Nick would operate as a sweeper ready to nip in and tackle
should Rothwell elude Robert’s tender mercies.
“From the start, the villagers played a disciplined game
plan to man mark Wellthorpe maestro Duncan Rothwell. The
tactic worked a treat as, without his midfield prompting, the
Wellthorpe attack made little headway against a solid
Thormanton defence.”
Kevin had decided to start the great project in a modest
way with Nick and Robert. He had broached it in an oblique
way by inviting them around to his home one night during the
week whilst his Mother was out researching at York University
Library.
“Seen anything like this before, lads?” Kevin felt oddly
like some disgusting, middle-aged pederast in a grubby
raincoat seducing two innocent schoolboys. He knew they both
devoured printed porn and would be more than eager to view a
hardcore DVD.
“Nicholas Cammack and Robert Swales played out of their
skins to nullify Rothwell.”
They sat impatiently expectant through the opening
sequences shot on location on a separate day. Nick and Robert
fidgeted through the leaden acting as Theresa and another
actress exchanged stilted lines in the grounds outside an
obviously deserted comprehensive school. Then, a badly-edited
cut flashed up the classroom set in Rosemary’s house. Shocked
guffaws erupted involuntarily from Nick and Robert’s gaping
mouths at the spectacle of Kevin in his schoolboy outfit.
They both sat forward in their chairs in rapt attention as the
scene played out.
Although flatly lit and slackly directed, it succeeded in
its modest aims and Robert provided a mock round of applause
at the conclusion. They paid the remainder of its sixty
minutes scant heed as, bursting with curiosity, they pumped
him with questions.
“Sell the sizzle, not the steak,” Kevin recalled reading
in a sales leaflet once. Having played his trump card, Kevin
told him that Rosemary was in the market for more young studs.
It was left vague enough for them to insinuate anything.
There was a chance that insecurity, shock, or macho bravado
would impel them to refuse outright. He breathed a mental
sigh of relief as their body language perked up at being told
there was an opening next Sunday. Kevin coerced them by
saying that, if they played to order on Saturday against
Wellthorpe, he would furnish them with the details.
A hundred negative scenarios played themselves out in
Kevin’s boiling brain in the few days leading up to Saturday.
Would they think he was bluffing? Would they get cold feet?
Would they talk about it to someone and the scandal would
break prematurely – with the very real danger of eradicating
his sex life whilst it was still budding? He’d performed the
hard sell on the consequence-free sex and the two hundred
pound almost as an afterthought. He’d impressed on them the
urgent need to be discreet about it in front of the rest of
the team – not to mention everyone else locally. He neglected
to mention that Rosemary felt both these lads were either
virgins or inexperienced enough to forego the HIV testing.
Keith Black, the Manager of Wellthorpe, was a nasty,
belligerent sod. His stocky figure resembled an agglomeration
of boxed-off corners from his extreme, buzz cut hairstyle,
that made his head look like it was chiselled out of granite,
to his unnaturally right-angled shoulders. He cultivated the
manner and appearance of a psychotic ex-member of the SAS.
Only his short stature humiliatingly betrayed the truth. He
had spent practically all his working life in some undefined
sales capacity and was currently engaged in buying up barley
and wheat from local farmers for a biscuit factory. He often
hinted at some unspecified link to a Northern Counties East
League team in the past, and often dredged up some laborious
anecdote about his time there, but it had probably been a
fleeting association.
At the annual league committee meetings, his obnoxious
interjections left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth and liked
to boast how he ruled his Wellthorpe players with a rod of
iron. When one of his players had attempted a move to play
for Norbury, Black had bragged he could blacklist him so
utterly he would be lucky to get a game for Thormanton. Kevin
still squirmed at the memory of that remark when Eric Skilbeck
relayed it to him after one meeting. He had been assured it
hadn’t been meant as an insult, in much the same way as a
laddish joshing of nerds is laughed off with the supremely
patronising “He knows we don’t mean it! It’s just a joke!”
But it stuck in Kevin’s craw and he had added Black’s name to
his ever-expanding shit-list.
Now, Kevin almost felt sorry for him. He could feel as
sorry for him as for the first complacent hippies who’d first
set eyes on the Sex Pistols live and felt the first death
pangs of their settled, sleazy world. They were confronted
head on with something utterly alien with a brutish disregard
for the etiquette that dictated their lives and left them
bruised, battered and bleeding in their triumphal wake. Now,
they were history – the unwanted wallflowers in the disco of
life. Cool no longer, they were just another clichéd sub-
species to be satirised.
Wellthorpe were never numbered among the elite of the
league. They usually ended their campaigns mid-table but
their stock had risen in recent years due to the presence of
one Duncan Rothwell.
Rothwell’s face wore the self-absorbed thousand-yard
stare of the addicted sportsman. A natural at cricket, he
was invariably first of the school team sheets and had
impressed local scouts enough to be given a trial at nearby
Middlesbrough. It appeared to have come to nought, but his
presence alone – he towered above his fellow teammates both
literally and metaphorically, a Gulliver among a stocky
collection of Lilliputians – had elevated Wellthorpe over
their fellow mid-table mediocrities.
Even in the pre-match kick about, there was an unhurried
precision to everything Rothwell did. For someone so tall and
gangling, he was astonishingly graceful with no wasted
movements, and when he completed a pass or a shot, he remained
frozen, as if frozen for a photo. Whereas Steven’s on field
posturing looked as forced and unconvincing as a miscast
actor, with Rothwell it had become so ingrained that the face
had grown into the mask, it looked entirely natural. In the
previous season, he had torn Thormanton apart like some
narcissistic action hero disposing of anonymous extras,
securing two goals in a five-nil rout.
The match began on a note of deceptive familiarity.
“Ready, Emma?” called Kevin from outside as the girl changed
in the Thormanton changing rooms.
“Just a sec!” came the upbeat reply. Kevin paused
midstride to take in the squalid spectacle of Steven Cooke
and John Swales taking furtive turns at squinting through a
hole in the wooden wall at the unsuspecting girl within. Both
were grinning broadly and Kevin could chart the progress of
Emma’s disrobing and dressing in the expressions of their
faces. Both withdrew guiltily as she finally drew her crisp
white shorts up over her taut, white buttocks.
The portly, middle-aged Referee ensured his “Bobby
Charlton” comb over was in place before blowing hard on his
whistle for Wellthorpe to kick off.
Kevin had learned to appreciate the early minutes of a
game. They often constituted an illusion of parity with the
opposition. Then, the first goal would fly in, and the
floodgates burst open. But, not this time.
Rothwell received a sideways pass deep in midfield and
looked set to embark upfield on one of his patented surging
runs where opposition defences parted like the Red Sea. On
this occasion, he ran straight into an uncompromising block
tackle from Robert Swales. It had the disquieting comedy of
an unstoppable behemoth malfunctioning and the impression was
that the earth shuddered under the impact.
Kevin smiled approvingly. He also noted the sight of
Nick standing poised a few feet away providing cover.
Rothwell clambered uneasily to his feet. His expression was
that of a discomfited actor thrown completely by an unscripted
ad lib. He seemed to mentally dismiss it as a one-off
aberration. It would prove a fatal error of judgement.
Intercepting a mislaid cross field pass, Rothwell again
looked set fair to dictate the pattern of play only for a
sliding tackle, straight out of the text book, from Robert to
put paid to such plans.
The paradigm for the match was set in stone. Throughout
the first half, every time Rothwell picked up the ball, he
barely had time to settle before Robert Swales would come
flying in with all the fourteen stone bulk at his disposal to
ruthlessly rob him and leave his pretentions of sporting
aesthetics lying mugged in the dirt. On the few occasions
Rothwell was able to ghost past Robert, Nick Cammack was
strategically placed as cover to get in a tackle and sweep up
any incipient danger.
Like a stand-up comedian before an unreasonably hostile
audience, Rothwell and the rest of his hitherto complacent
Wellthorpe players were dumbfounded. Uncertainty infected
them like virulent flu. They were a beat slower in the tackle
and pass. Thormanton smelled this like a pig snuffing
truffles. Previously cowed Thormanton footballers like the
younger Swales’ brothers and Paul Myers seemed to grow an
extra inch as, scenting glory, they put themselves about with
more assertion and vigour. In spite of the odd flap, Sammy
Patterson dealt competently, if colourlessly, with the few
long range shot and desperate high crosses that the blunted
Wellthorpe attack was reduced to. His defence was in no real
danger of being breached. What, to an onlooker, resembled a
scruffy midfield tussle was an epic triumph to Thormanton.
They reached the half time whistle in the unaccustomed
achievement of a goal-less draw.
As reality set in, Keith Black’s imploring on the touch
line grew more comically abusive. “Gerrup, bloody Rothwell!”
He was of the generation to who “bloody” was still a shocking
word. “I’ve seen better organisation from an epileptics’
squitters!”
Kevin idly wondered about the unexpected literary
inventiveness and a surreal imagery Salvador Dali would envy
that obnoxious little turds like Keith Black could summon up
from the dark recesses of their limited minds. He recalled
reading somewhere that anger provoked unusual bouts of
superhuman strength. Could the brain benefit too?
Several of the middle-aged women watching nearby
registered outrage. “Sorry ‘bout the language, love,” Black
offered to one of them. “Won’t happen again!” Then, he
winced as Robert virtually took the ball off Rothwell’s toes.
“Fuckin’ Rothwell! Tha’s playing about as well as my arse
chews gum!”
Another revelation. This was truly a day for them.
Male anger in the great unwashed produced endless involuntary
genital references. In the end, it literally all came down to
orifices. The magic of sex and reproduction was negated to
the level of a good shit.
The contrast between the two changing rooms for the
fifteen minute interval at half time could not have been more
pronounced. The sullenly mute Wellthorpe team sat, shoulders
hunched and cowed, in a ragged semi circle around Keith Black
as, purple-faced with wrath, he vented his fury. Rothwell and
his colleagues wore the exhausted thousand-yard stare of those
who had lived through some terrible natural disaster.
“Can’t you do summat’ ‘bout those fuckin’ sheepshaggers?”
They don’t deserve to be on the same fuckin’ pitch as you!”
“What the fuck can we do?” Rothwell could restrain
himself no further. “They just keep on coming – like they’re
on fucking drugs or summat’”
Black’s words penetrated the plaster wall between the
home and away dressing rooms but, apart from provoking the odd
mocking snigger, it barely impinged on their consciousness.
“Nil-nil! Christ!” exclaimed Steven to nobody in
particular. “When wor’ the last time we wor’ nil-nil at half
time?”
“You can tell they’re not enjoying it,” Emma gabbled
excitedly. All personal snubs and slights were forgotten in
the excited hubbub. Exclusive personal cliques were ignored.
Kevin crossed the room to where Nick and Robert were standing
strangely apart from the rest. Their excitement was different
too. Inner.
“You two have been a fucking revelation!” said Kevin.
“I’ve told you before. Stop Rothwell playing and you stop
Wellthorpe.”
“Aye,” Sammy chipped in. “I’ve barely had owt’ to save.”
Spoken Word
This CD will touch the deepest inner part of your humanness and spirit, you will never be the same after listening to the depths of struggle, the reality of life, the touching voice of truth. It will shock you, move you to tears. It w
