Voy

by George Best, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

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The first time Mick Toal took the ball off him, Jas Sangha heard the word after the ball had gone.

Voy.

That was the order of it. The rattle of the ball under his right foot, then no rattle, then a big man's breath going out through his nose, then the word, low, in a Preston voice, as if somebody were telling you the time in a library. Then the rattle again, but going away from him, over towards the far board, and Mick's trainers going after it, squeak and thud, squeak and thud, and from the halfway line Dave's voice: Back, Jas, back, get back.

He got back. He put his left hand out in front of him at the height of a man's chest, the way you do, and walked backwards with small steps towards the sound of his own keeper. Sunil was shouting Left, Jas, you're left, come right, and he came right. The board was on his left now. He could feel it there without touching it, the way you feel a wall in a dark kitchen, a kind of thickness in the air on that side.

Mick's lot didn't score. They passed it about at the far end, rattle and silence and rattle, and somebody hit it hard against the boards so the whole length of them boomed, and the whistle went for something, and that was that.

But he'd heard the word after the ball had gone. Nobody does that to you twice. Mick did it to him twice.

---

The hall was off the Foleshill Road, a leisure centre with a roof so high you could hear the ball come back down off it a half-second after you'd kicked it. Most of the teams didn't like it. You'd hear the ball where it was and then you'd hear it again where it wasn't. Jas had grown up four streets away and played in it since he was eleven, and he'd stopped hearing the second ball years ago, the way you stop hearing the fridge.

It was the second Saturday in October and the round had started at ten. Four teams, two pitches end to end with a curtain down the middle, three games each, the boards bolted together in sections along both sides so that when somebody went into them at pace the bolts squealed. Twenty minutes a half. In the corner there was a café that did a bacon roll for two pounds eighty and a tea in a polystyrene cup for one pound twenty, and between games Jas could smell the bacon through the eyeshade, which smelled of foam and of the sweat of every Saturday since March.

This was their second game. They'd lost the first one-nil to a side from Bristol who'd had a penalty given against Ricky for leaning. Now it was Preston, and at Preston was Mick Toal.

Jas knew him the way you know a man from twelve Saturdays a year for four years: by his voice, by the weight of him, by the smell of the menthol stuff he put on his knee. Mick was forty-one. He worked nights in a sorting depot outside Chorley and drove down on the morning with the others in a minibus, and he'd tell you that he'd been playing this game since before Jas had been born, which wasn't true, and that he'd once marked a Brazilian in Spain, which was. He was big and slow and he didn't go to ground. Jas had never once got past him on his own.

It was the word. That was what everyone said about Mick. A defender going in for the ball has to say it, voy, I'm going, so the man with the ball knows there's somebody coming and doesn't get his knee broken. That's the law. The referee has to hear it. Most defenders said it early, a yard off, because they were frightened of the whistle, and if you heard it a yard off you had a whole yard to do something in. Mick said it at the last moment there was. He said it with his foot already going. He said it quiet, but never so quiet the referee couldn't hear, and he'd been doing it for so long that the referees had stopped listening for it and just listened for Mick.

So you didn't hear him coming. You heard him arrive.

---

For the first ten minutes Jas kept it closer. It was what Dave had told him before kick-off, standing by the board with a hand on his shoulder and his breath smelling of the bacon roll: Keep it closer. Keep it in your feet with him.

So he kept it in his feet.

That was the thing he was best at, and the thing he'd done longest. He did it the way they all did it, the way they'd taught him at the school on a Tuesday afternoon when he was nine: the ball between your feet and a little in front, and you push it with the inside of the right, and catch it with the inside of the left, and push it back, and catch it with the right. Touch, touch, touch, touch. Never let it get away from you. Never let it go quiet. Because the second it goes quiet you don't know where it is, and neither does anyone else, and the man with the most feet in the right place gets it.

He'd done that up and down the yard behind his mum's house on Eagle Street until the neighbour on the left had come round about it. Before the school had given him a proper ball, the one with the ball-bearings inside it, he'd done it with an old size four in a Tesco bag, knotted at the top, so he could hear where it was by the rustle. His mum had kept a drawer of carrier bags for it. They went through about one a week. He'd done it with the right foot leading and then with the left foot leading, because the man at the school said that if you only ever led with the right then the defender knew where the ball would be on your next touch, and Jas had thought that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, because how could a defender know anything? He'd been nine.

Now he took the ball off Ricky on the halfway line and pushed it, left, right, left, right, and went at the sound of Bev.

Bev was behind the other goal. She was their guide, and a guide is allowed to talk only in the last third of the pitch, and Bev talked like she was paying for it by the word. Jas, Jas, fifteen. Straight on. Twelve, he's on your right, keep coming, ten. She'd taught PE in a girls' school in Wyken for thirty-two years and she had a voice that went through a wall. He liked her. He went towards her.

He heard Mick at ten. He didn't hear him with his ears. He heard the floor. The boards had a way of carrying the weight of a big man coming, a sort of hum, and the floor did as well, and Mick was coming across from Jas's left at a walk, not quickly, nothing like quickly, the way a man comes across a car park towards his car.

Touch, touch, touch.

Mick's breath.

Voy.

And the ball was gone again. Jas's right foot went out for it and found air, and something hard and wide went across the front of his shins, Mick's leg, Mick's whole body turning behind it, and Jas went over it. He didn't go down. He put his left hand out and found Mick's back, a big warm back in a wet shirt, and he held himself up on it, and the whistle went.

He stood still and waited for the referee to say what for.

"Hand," said the referee. "Free kick, Preston."

Behind him, a long way off, somebody on the Preston bench laughed. Somebody in the crowd hissed at them to shush, because nobody is allowed to make a noise in that hall while the ball's in play, not until a goal, and even then you've got about ten seconds and then they want hush again. It was a rule Jas loved more than any other rule in the game. When it was quiet like that you could hear everyone thinking.

---

At half-time it was nil-nil. They sat on the low bench by the board on the café side and took their eyeshades off, because you're allowed to at half-time, and Jas held his in his lap and turned the foam pad round and round with his thumb. Ricky had a bag of jelly babies and passed it along. Dave crouched in front of them with his knees cracking and told them they were doing grand, that Preston were blowing, that they needed to get it out of their feet quicker in the last third, to look for Bev, to listen for Bev, to use Bev.

"Jas, you're holding it too long with him."

"Yeah."

"Get it out of your feet. Lay it off. Ricky's there."

"Yeah."

Dave went down the line to Sunil, to talk about the corners.

Jas had the ball between his feet. Somebody had left it by the bench and he'd found it with his heel. He sat with his elbows on his knees, and he started pushing it. Inside of the right, inside of the left. Touch, touch, touch. Very softly, so it barely rattled. It was the noise of his whole childhood, that, the noise of the yard behind Eagle Street with the bins and the drain and the neighbour's telly on through the wall.

Right, left, right.

Right, left, right.

On the bench beside him Ricky stopped chewing.

"What you doing?"

"Nothing."

He did it again. He was counting. He didn't know he was counting until he heard himself doing it, and then he couldn't stop. Mick had come in twice in the first half, and once he'd said it as Jas's right foot went to the ball, and the other time he'd said it as Jas's right foot went to the ball, and the one time Mick had come close, early on, and said nothing and backed off again, Jas had been leading with his left.

He thought about the man at the school. How could a defender know?

Right, left, right.

He stopped the ball with the sole of his foot. It went quiet. He sat and listened to nothing for a while, and the café door going, and a child somewhere saying Mum in the tone of a child who has said it eleven times.

Then the referee was calling them back on, and he put the eyeshade on, and the patches under it were cold now and he pressed them flat with two fingers, and went.

---

Eleven minutes into the second half, Preston scored.

It was nobody's fault. A long hit from the halfway line went the full length of the hall and came off the end board and back across the front of Sunil's area, and Sunil had to stay in the area, the way goalkeepers must, and a Preston lad Jas didn't know met it on the run and it went in off the post. The hall went up. Ten seconds of it, hands on the boards, feet on the floor, somebody's whistle, a rattle of applause that came back off the roof twice. Then hush. Then the referee: Quiet now, please. Quiet.

Jas stood on the halfway line with his hands on his knees and listened to them going back to their half, slapping each other's hands, and to Mick's voice in among them, not saying anything about the goal. Saying, Shape. Shape, lads.

"Jas," said Dave, from the line. "Get it out of your feet."

---

The next time the ball came to him he didn't get it out of his feet.

Ricky played it to him off the right board, the way they'd practised it on Thursdays, so it came off the wood at an angle and rolled into his path, and Jas took it on the outside of his right foot and caught it with the inside of his left, and went.

Touch, touch, touch. Down the right. The board was on his right side now, a foot off, humming.

Jas, said Bev. Fifteen. Straight. He's on your left, he's coming. Twelve.

He didn't need Bev for that. He could hear Mick coming. The floor. The walk. The breath going in and out, a bit heavier now, fifteen minutes into the second half, a man of forty-one who'd done a night shift on Thursday. Mick came in from the left the same way as before, across the car park, not hurrying, getting goal-side of him, and then he slowed, and Jas felt him settle, a yard off, a yard and a half, between Jas and the goal. Waiting.

Jas went slower.

Not stopped. He didn't stop. You couldn't stop with Mick a yard off, because a stopped ball is a silent ball, and a silent ball is anybody's. He just went slower. Touch, touch, touch. Left, right, left. Right, left, right. Very even. Very steady. The rattle like a clock in a hall. He made it as steady as he had ever made anything in his life, steady as the yard, so steady that Mick, a yard off in the dark with his menthol knee, could have told you where the ball would be in a second and a half's time, and in two, and in three.

He heard Mick listening.

He heard him get sure. It was in the breath. The breath went in, and stayed.

Right, left, right.

And on the next right, before it, as Jas's right foot went to the ball, Mick's weight went down onto his front foot, and the floor took it, and the word came.

Voy.

Jas didn't touch the ball with the inside of his right foot. He'd been going to, for an hour, for twenty years. He touched it with the outside instead, not across his body but away from it, into the board.

The ball hit the board about two yards ahead of him with a crack like a door slamming, and the board took it and gave it back, off at the angle it had gone in, back out across the pitch and away from the wood, into the space in front of the place Mick had been standing a half-second before, and where Mick wasn't now. Mick was where the ball should have been. Jas heard his foot go into it, into the place, and find air. He heard the big man's weight go after his foot, the whole body following the leg, the way it does when a man has told the room he's going.

Jas went the other way. Past him on the board side, where there was no room.

Mick's hip came round and hit him, a big hip, all of Mick behind it, trying to get back. It hit Jas on the outside of his left thigh and turned him half round. He didn't go down. He let it turn him, and let his weight go into the turn instead of against it, the way you let a bus take you round a corner when you're standing up holding the rail, and when the turn was done he was still on his feet and still moving and the ball was rattling in front of him and to the left, slowing.

He heard where it was. Three yards. Rolling away. He found it with his left foot on the second stride, the inside of the left, just as it went quiet, and caught it, and it rattled again.

Ten! said Bev. TEN, Jas, straight on, eight, left post, he's coming from the left, seven —

He heard the second defender. A younger voice, from the left, saying voy far too early, three yards off, frightened. Jas touched the ball once, inside of the left, across onto his right, and heard the boy's foot come in where it had been, too late, nowhere. The keeper was shouting at somebody. Ricky was shouting his own name from somewhere behind him, Ricky, Ricky, Ricky, the way you do so they know where you are, and he was coming, but there was a Preston man coming back with him; Jas could hear his feet.

Six, said Bev. Near post's shut. Shut. Far post, Jas, far post, far post —

Her voice had moved. It was behind the far post now, low down, as if she'd crouched.

He hit it across himself with the inside of his right foot, low, along the floor, towards her voice. He didn't hit it hard. It didn't need to be hard. He heard it go: the rattle going away from him, a long fast shiver of a rattle going away across the floor, and the keeper's feet going across after it, too late, a slap of a glove on the floor.

Then a different sound. The rattle stopping all at once, in the net, the way a bag of coins stops when you put it down.

---

The hall went up again. Somebody had a hand on his head, Ricky, and somebody was on his back, and Bev was shouting something with no numbers in it at all. He stood in it. He could hear the sound come down off the roof, the half-second late version, all the people a second time. He had both his hands up in the air and he didn't remember putting them there.

Then hush, and the referee: Quiet now, please.

He walked back to his half with his left hand out and found the board with it and walked along that, the wood cold and a bit damp from all the hands, and the bolts squealing where he leant on them.

Somebody was standing by the halfway line. The menthol came first, and then the breath.

"You little get," said Mick.

"Yeah."

"Who taught you that?"

Jas thought about it. He thought about the man at the school, and about the yard, and the bags. But that wasn't it either. That wasn't who'd taught him.

"You did," he said.

Mick didn't say anything. He breathed out through his nose, the way he did before the word, and then he went past, back to his side, and his hand slapped Jas once on the back, between the shoulder blades, as he went.

---

There were four minutes left. Dave was shouting from the line about shape, and Bev had gone quiet behind the far goal, and the hall was quiet the way only that hall went quiet, everyone holding still, everyone listening.

Preston kicked off. Jas went towards the sound of the ball.

They passed it about. Rattle and silence and rattle. It came loose off a board and he was on it, the ball between his feet, right, left, right, before he'd even thought, and he heard Mick coming across the car park towards him again, the floor taking the weight, slower than before, more careful.

A yard and a half off, Mick said it. Voy. Out loud. Early. There was nothing on his foot.

Jas heard it, and kept the ball where it was, between his feet, rattling, very softly, and waited.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem quārtum Nōnās Octōbrēs (4 October 2026), ā Georgiō Bestō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

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George Best, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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