SHORT STORIES

THE TUNNEL

I remember it as if it was yesterday but it wasn’t, of course, not by a long chalk. I still see some of the lads now and then, none of them lads any more, though.

As a matter of fact, I had a drink with Jack Bailey only the other day, and we talked (as usual) about how these youngsters today haven’t got the guts or the know how that we had. They have, I suppose some of them but we like to imagine that they haven’t. It was meeting Jack like that in the pub that started me remembering all over again...

It was dark in the tunnel, I recall, but after a while we could see each other, pale faced and nervous, lined up one behind the other, waiting for the signal to move. Some of the men were murmuring to each other, mostly bad jokes to try to keep their spirits up, but I was busy trying to swallow trying to pretend that I wasn’t scared.

We’d made it, hadn’t we? We were nearly there. But once we were out there, we were on our own. And looking at the others, I could see that I wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure. We were there against all the odds. It couldn’t be done, they said. But that’s what they thought. We had proved that it could be done, with months of talking, of planning, and of work sheer, back breaking hard work. And luck. Gallons of luck.

There were one or two close shaves, I don’t mind telling you. Once or twice when we were very nearly caught with our trousers down. But we weren’t, so all that didn’t matter now. We just never gave up. Well, you had to try, didn’t you? You couldn’t just sit back and say it was impossible, because nothing’s impossible.

We could hear the feet above us, threatening to bring the whole bloody tunnel down about our heads. They were the ones who had to wait and see what happened. Some of them had tried themselves, and failed; some had never made an attempt, preferring to take the safe way, and leave others to get the glory. Some, needless to say, didn’t exactly wish us all the best.

I looked at the others; I wasn’t consciously trying to remember how they looked then, but that’s what happened. I can see them now, like a still photograph in my mind.

Billy Hulme, round faced and eager, looking younger than ever in those tense moments; Alfie Fraser, his square chin even more determined than usual, unsmilingly nodding acknowledgement of whatever Jack was saying to him. Nothing ever stopped Jack talking.

My eyes met Ron Adamson’s, but he wasn’t seeing me. His face was set, his high forehead wrinkled with anxiety that everything should go well. He always was a worrier, and now he had something he could really get his teeth into.

All we had to do was run out there. Nothing was going to stop us now, not now that we had got this far. But it wasn’t the end of our problems, not at all. The real problems were just beginning. If we had needed a lot of luck before, it was peanuts compared to how much we’d need to carry it through to the end. It didn’t matter how carefully we had been drilled, how well we remembered what we had been told; once we left the warm safe tunnel, we could throw the book away.

We had to go out there and get away with it we had to look the same as them, work and play the same way they did, or we were lost. And we didn’t know if we could do it.

Jack said he knew we could. All along, if we began to get cold feet, he’d tell us that we were going to make history. ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘They’ll all know about us twenty, thirty years from now. You’ll see. We’re not beaten yet,’ he’d say, if we were a bit low. But he wasn’t that confident, not really.

Still, it kept our spirits up when the going got rough. He was probably more responsible than anyone for us being there, or we’d have been defeated before we’d really started.

I tried to feel confident, but it didn’t work. I didn’t want to go out. I said as much to Jack, and he laughed. ‘Oh, no, of course not,’ he said. ‘You’d rather stay here, in the dry!’

I laughed too, but I suppose the weather wasn’t helping. It was May at its worst, with fine cold rain that made you shiver just to look at it.

‘Don’t be daft!’ he said to me, still making a joke of it. ‘No one would pass up this chance no one! Your wife’s out there, remember. Your kids want to see their dad, don’t they? You’re just nervous. And there’s nothing to be nervous about. The worst’s over. We’ve made it no matter what happens out there, we got further than any of that lot imagined we would. And if we don’t carry it off,’ he added, with a shrug admitting the possibility for the first time – ‘well, that’s fate. You might as well go in a blaze of glory. And that’s what it is, make no mistake. Glory!’

He was right, old Jack, even if he didn’t believe it himself really. The thought of Mary and the kids made me determined that we wouldn’t fail. I felt as if I hadn’t seen them for a hundred years. A hundred years since she had seen me off, kissing me, trying not to look as though she was worried, and not succeeding.

Suddenly, I realised it was time. I don’t what I thought as my feet moved. But I know what I felt, when my feet were actually running running on the sweet green turf of Wembley Stadium.

© Jill McGown, 1973