Metropolitan Lines Issue 2 - Brunel University

December 1945...
by John West
Arsenal 3 (Rooke, Mortenson 2),
Dynamo Moscow 4 (Bobrov, other scorers unknown)
You draw deeply from your Victory, feel the smoke
expand your lungs as it goes about its lethal but
invigorating work. Now you rub your mittened hands
against the wintry chill, exhale and watch your breathe
dissolve into the general fug, see it thicken and expand
to fill the ground. You're here, at the Lane, to write
about the Dynamo and the Arsenal for the Tribune. Or,
at least, that was the idea. You were going to write
about the game, but instead you're stood here shivering
and sniffling and staring at low cloud. You take another
puff of Victory. It draws a rattle from you as stirring as
that of any whirled above their head by a young
enthusiast. You peer out and vaguely sense there's still
a pitch behind the secretive curtain of fog. You're here,
at the Lane, to watch the Arsenal play at home and
somewhere a clock must be striking thirteen.
You're here to watch the Dynamo play the Arsenal at
the Lane, but this isn't really the Arsenal. How could a
team containing Matthews, Mortenson and Rooke be
called an Arsenal team? That is what the Soviets will
claim. And you know, if no one else does, that this is not
a Dynamo team but a Soviet team. You don't want to
admit it, don't want to be their stooge or help do
Pravda's work for them, but deep down you
acknowledge that the men from Moscow are correct.
How could it be otherwise? This is Dzerzhinsky's team.
So this will not be Dynamo v. Arsenal. This is England
v The USSR. This is not football, this is propaganda;
this will not be sport, it will be war minus the shooting.
And you are here, at the Lane, recording the
particulars, tugging on a Victory smoke and grimacing
a little with every waft of the whiff of the flat-capped
42
faculty fiction
crowd around you. They are mainly here to see these
sporting heroes from the realm of Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe.
There's nothing avuncular about the reign of the Soviet
Tsar. You've tried to tell them, but they will not listen.
But you'll keep going, trying to find the words to nail
this slippery, wriggling and inconvenient truth to the
cathedral door. After the match you'll peel away from
the dispersing crowd, head back to Canonbury Square
and tap away at those sturdy iron keys, alone once more
with that interrogating consciousness; the last man in
Europe.
You peer through the fog at where the teams should
be. You can see the ghostly frames of the two Soviet
linesmen, their boots hugging the chalk of the same
right-hand touchline in a Soviet perversion of the norm.
The game kicks off and straight away the Russians
score. "Bobrov", suggests a flat-capped cockney in the
crowd. Then Rooke scores; then another two for
Mortenson before the Russians pull one back and score
again. There's a scuffle between the players, a white
shirt arm strikes out through fug. Half time arrives, a
break in the hostilities; this war without the weapons
pauses for a brief cup of tea.
The fog grows ever thicker; the restart is delayed.
Low heavy cloud obscures the machinations in the
tunnel. A rumour starts to work its way around the
ground; the Soviet officials will call off the game if their
team has not drawn level before the end. Finally, into
the murky gloom the 22 emerge. Red and white shirts
flash out of the fog like plane tails plunging through low
cloud. The Russians score. They score again. The final
whistle blows; the air is foul.
You'll trudge back down the Seven Sisters, past
beastly charred facades. Ill and filled with ill-will, you'll
shuffle up the stairs. Another whooping, rattling cough
as you unwind your tight pulled, 'tache tickling scarf.
You'll roll and shift and clunk and jab until gradually the
black words seep and thaw the sheet of snow before
you. Your spirit slowly warms. Another Victory. You let
it dangle, downward pointing,
held steady by a tight-lipped
smile. Tap tap tap. Clunk. Tap
tap tap tap tap tap as you type
your weekly Tribune piece: As I
Please, by George Orwell; "The
Sporting Spirit"...
Metropolitan Lines Summer 2008