‘Do you like him?’

‘I’ve told you already: he’s very nice.’

‘His name’s Theodore.’

‘Yes, you told me. Can I call him Theo?’

‘No. His name’s Theodore.’

‘But Theo is short for…’

‘His name’s Theodore.’

‘Do you ever let him…’

‘I’ve had him since he was an egg.’

‘Yes, you told me.’

I turned to look out of the window. The Black Country smog was thinning as factories closed for the half-day, yet to be replenished by cheap coal fumes from the houses that clung to them like barnacles. Where there was green, children played tick, hid behind trees or climbed them. Too late for birds’ nests and too early for conkers, they sought only greater and greater height, greater and greater danger, greater and greater prestige. Others knew their place, and the limitations to their courage, and stayed on the ground watching. The race must be lost as well as won. There are no kings of the castles without the serfs in the fields.

Trevor would have been on the ground, though whether he’d have had anyone to watch was another matter. I could never really work out whether Jack Dudley’s nephew was happy or not. His mania for data and trivia, his love of animals, the ability to lose himself in any abstract task: did it make him happy, or did it merely distract from loneliness? Would he ever be able to share the world he’d built inside his head with anybody but tolerant adults?

His uncle Jack hadn’t fancied the trip, or rather, he hadn’t fancied the price he’d pay with his Margaret for going on the trip.

‘It’s a long way, Gonby,’ he’d said, ‘And a big train fare. Margaret wants a new salt cellar, which ay gonna cost three farthings.’

‘All right.’

‘You could take Madge’s Trevor, though, if you don’t mind. Her Job is poorly at the minute.’

‘Trevor? He doesn’t even like football!’

‘It’ll do him good.’

‘It’ll do you good, you mean.’

‘Please, Gonby. He’s such a mither round the house.’

Jack must have caught me on a good day, because I said yes, as long as he could amuse himself while we were in the pub; that the boy couldn’t amuse himself at that time without Theodore the Song Thrush in tow came as new information when I picked him up from Jack’s that morning, and something of a surprise to Chimdy and Pete Passmore when I met them on the platform of the Low Level station.

The bird seemed unsettled during the journey, squawking and fidgeting on its perch. An old blind man and his wife joined our compartment at Bilston, and tutted as Theodore fussed and fluttered. Occasionally, Trevor fed it snails from a paper bag he had in his pocket, which calmed the bird a little.

‘Does it sing?’ asked Chimdy as we left Dudley.

Trevor put his face close to the cage and whistled a coaxing trill. Theodore tilted his head for a few seconds and then took song. It was the most beautiful noise I’d ever heard. Up, down and around the octave, the thrush’s voice glided and hopped. Minor thirds dropped down like rain. Every time he came up with a phrase that particularly moved me, he seemed to know, and repeated it once or twice before moving on. I looked over to the blind man, and saw tears streaming down his cheeks, while his wife gazed through the window but out far beyond.

We headed to the Crown and Cushion near the Four Acres ground, and quaffed deeply, leaving Trevor out on the street with Theodore. The beer was good, and the West Bromwich supporters we encountered inside friendly enough, albeit not very knowledgeable about the game.

After the third round, I took out a glass of water for Trevor. The sight that met me on Lloyd Street was pitiful: the poor lad bawling his eyes out and jumping to try and grab Theodore’s cage, held aloft by the tallest of a dozen local boys, who taunted and spat at him.

‘That’s enough!’ I said, approaching the mob. ‘Now give him back his bird.’

There was silence, underpinned with the tension of a big decision. One of those forks in the road of time. Then the smallest of the boys said, ‘Mek us then.’

I tried to grab the cage but was no more successful than Trevor, receiving pushes and punches from the youths.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ll pay you for it.’

‘Five quid,’ said the little urchin, and his gang all laughed.

‘No, ten,’ said another, hoping and failing to get double the laughs.

‘… guineas!’ shouted Shorty, milking the laughs by looking around him and clicking his lower lip with his tongue.

Four or five Albion fans emerged from the pub on their way to the ground.

‘What’s gooin’ on here?’ asked one of them, as he put his flat cap firmly onto his head.

‘They’ve stolen this boy’s song thrush.’

‘Oh, ar? That true, our Matthew?’

‘Liar!’ shouted the tallest, ‘It’s mayan.’

‘Boy says it’s his,’ said the man. His friends were calling him away up the road.

‘It’s not his.’

‘No? Well, it is now. Ask anyone in the pub they’ll tell you the same. Now piss off.’

I didn’t know what to say. The boys just laughed in my face, and then teased Trevor.

‘You like our throstle, do yer? Jealous, am ya?

‘It’s mine!’ shouted Trevor through his tears, ‘I’ve had it since it was an egg!’

‘Since it was an egg!’ laughed the gang, ‘Since it was an egg!’

Another crowd of men emerged from the Crown and Cushion, one of them bald with whiskers in the Crimean style. ‘Noice Throstle, Matthew,’ he said, ‘Am ya teckin’ it to the gime?’

‘Ar. Come on yow Throstle,’ said Matthew, and the boys started down the road.

Matthew looked at me, the responsible adult, powerless to stop his tears, and a whole phase of his childhood, perhaps his childhood itself, being amputated before his eyes. There was no anaesthetic. Chimdy and Pete were at my shoulders now, and tried to help me console the boy with smiles, recompenses, promises. I knew that none of it would work. The pain would never go, only deaden; the stream of tears would run dry but its source would babble away forever. I hated these throstle-snatchers, and wished childish gypsy curses on them. I thought of the sound of Theodore’s song, and wondered if he’d sing for his captors as beautifully as he’d sung for us.

There was no point not going to the game having come this far. As it turned out there was no point going, either. Each Albion goal was another blow to Trevor, another vindication for the throttle-thieves and their enablers, who taunted us by holding aloft the bird that would become the club’s mascot and emblem. 4-2. We headed back to Wolverhampton in gloomy silence.

The South Staffordshire derby was born.