‘THIRTEENTH NOT GOOD DAY TO TRAVEL STOP VISIT IF YOU ARE IN TOWN STOP SZABO.’

Dicky Toolan rolled his eyes and passed the telegram back to me. ‘Thirteenth unlucky is it? Good job we’ve got your mate on the case to guide us through these eternal mysteries, Gonby.’

I scratched my jowl, surpressing impatience. Though I shared some of Dicky’s misgivings, our trips to Szabo’s place in Soho weren’t the only thing about London away days that were beginning to irritate me. Annie Bagshaw had called off the engagement and Toolan was alone again, exhausting concerted efforts to cheer him up and slowly enveloping Nobby Clarke and me with his lovelorn fog. Further down the smoking carriage, by contrast, the Subterraneans were in high spirits, flashing their torches through thick clouds of cigar and pipe smoke. Formed by ex-members of the Speleologist Squadron, most of them too fat for real pot-holing but still hooked on anything below ground level, they used the most pungent tobacco they could find in order to obscure the smell of the sewers, which tended ultimately to be their milieu. They, too, were Soho-bound, having organized an early session in a basement bar in Dean Street to be followed by a meandering route through the Victorian sewerage system, popping up through a manhole on the Barking Road thanks to some contacts in Newham Borough Council. Harry Pine, one of the Subterranean’s most likeable number, was calling me now, flashing his powerful torch into my eyes as he did so.

‘Am you sure you ay comin’ with us, Gonby?’ he shouted between expansive gusts of Perfecto.

‘I’m sure, mate,’ I said, looking in my pocket for the pack of cards I’d brought to keep Dicky’s mind off things, ‘Got to see someone.’

‘You dow know what you’m missing,’ he said, followed by something I couldn’t hear over a guffaw from the other members of his card school.

An insignificant sort of interaction, but one that would prove to be prescient. What I was missing would prove to be the key to that day. What I was missing, and what nobody could see.

□ □ □ □ □

Mosca was beating out a Persian carpet when we got to Ganton Street, dispersing tourists and shoppers with the resultant dust cloud. Upon seeing us, the little creature dropped his broom and gave an obsequious bow, ushering us into the shop with encouraging little grunts.

‘To your health, Gentleman,’ said our host, with a smile, ‘May the Wolves leave East Ham wictorious and – more importantly – alive!’

‘Maaaster! Maaaaster!’ he called, with hushed impatience, like a child in need of the toilet.

‘Don’t call me that when we have wisitors!’ came an irritable voice in the back room.

‘Its Meester Gonby!’ whispered Mosca loudly.

There was no reply but the sound of drawers opening and closing, things dropping on the floor, a shriek from a cat. Nobby Clarke perused some antiquated evening wear, while Dicky stared morosely at his own reflection in a dusty mirror. Finally Szabo emerged.

‘Gentlemen! Welcome! Welcome! You look well.’ The bell tinkled, and Mosca shuffled out, returning with the wrought-iron clothes rail from which the Persian carpet still hung. ‘Lock the door, Mosca. We do not want to be disturbed.’

We walked past tailcoats and toppers into the back room, where Mosca served us whisky from a familiar cristal decanter. ‘To your health, Gentleman,’ said our host, with a smile, ‘May the Wolves leave East Ham wictorious and – more importantly – alive!’

‘Are you coming with us today, Petru?’ I asked – his interest had been stimulated at Highbury earlier in the season.

‘With you? Yes,’ he said, ‘To the game, regrettably not.’

‘Yow ay mekkin’ any sense,’ said Nobby, irritably, ‘We’m gooin the game; am yow?’

‘Please gentlemen, take a seat.’ We sat down at the heavy walnut table, while Mosca slipped on some Marigolds and headed for the kitchenette. I passed around my last four Senior Service, and Szabo passed around a heavy pewter lighter. ‘You will not, I am sorry to say, be seeing Wolves today.’

Nobby got to his feet. ‘Try stoppin’ us!’ he said, storming towards the shop.

‘Mr Clarke – please. It is not I who will stop you. It is the Csendesek.’

A chilling cry came from the kitchenette.

A chilling cry came from the kitchenette.

‘Hush, Mosca!’ he snapped, and then rose to his feet and walked towards the sink. ‘They cannot hear us, my friend,’ he said softly, ‘We are safe.’

‘But how do we know, Maaaster?’ hissed Mosca.

‘They are not here. And you’ve missed a spot of grawy there, look.’

‘What’s got him so rattled?’ whispered Toolan to Szabo when he returned to the table.

‘Gentlemen, when you hear what I have to tell you, you will be as “rattled” as my loyal and devoted friend, if not more so….’

This did not, in fact, turn out to be the case. After Szabo had described the invisible beings who emitted no sound or scent, and who didn’t drink or eat or do very much at all, we were a little shocked, but…

‘Am they here now, Szabo? Am they watchin’ Mosca do the dishes?’

‘Can yow ask one of ‘em to pass the decanter, Petru? I’m spittin’ feathers here…’

‘Who’s farted?’

‘Must have been one of the Csendesek!’

‘How many Csendesek does it take to change a light bulb? Ten thousand to stand around and watch Mosca do it!’

‘Knock Knock.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘…’

‘Is it the Csendesek?’

‘Yeah!’

I admit I joined in with this sport at the beginning (offering the lads ‘Csendesek fags’ from my empty pack of Senior Service), but something about the tolerant smile on Szabo’s face made me feel sad very suddenly. I petitioned him once again to come to the match.

‘I will gladly take you in the landau,’ he said, ‘But there is simply no way we will get in. The ground will be filled with Csendesek already.’

‘Come on,’ I said, getting up from the table, ‘I’ll buy you a programme.’

□ □ □ □ □

Though pleasant at first, the journey by carriage became a little more complicated as we got on the Portway. First the horses reared up by West Ham Park, then Mosca waited behind a line of parked cars for five minutes thinking it was a Csendesek traffic jam. On Plashet Road he yanked the horses to a halt at a zebra crossing and refused to move off for fear of hitting one.

‘Why are they all coming here, do you suppose?’ I asked Szabo after a couple of minutes, to the sound of impatient car horns behind us.

‘Dee Paschal moon is a wery powerful force to dem, Gonby. Dey cannot resist.’

‘But it’s Easter everywhere.’

‘But dis is dee Easter End. Dee forces are stronger here.’

I wanted to reply, and thought better of it. Mosca was gingerly moving off, after an impatient Cortina had burst past him with a procession of expletives.

Finally, we arrived at the ground, and to our horror, it was just as Szabo had said: the turnstile doors were locked but not a sound was emerging. It was half past two. ‘Perhaps we can listen to it on the wireless,’ he said, hoping to console us.

‘Wireless?’ said Nobby, crossly, ‘This is the Wolves, not the bloody shipping forecast!’

Frustrated, we headed to the Boleyn Tavern, but our ill fortune continued. Nobby pushed and pulled at the door, but it wouldn’t open, though music blared from a juke box. He peered through the lettering on the frosted glass. ‘There’s staff behind the bar and no customers,’ he said, knocking hard to no avail.

‘Typical,’ grumbled Szabo quietly, ‘They lowe Marc Bolan.’

I smelt cigar smoke and turned around. A little way down the road, behind a warning sign and some safety barriers, Harry Pine’s bald head was emerging from the street. ‘Knew you’d catch up with us in the end,’ he smiled when I approached and then, seeing my face, ‘When’s the funeral?’

I explained the situation to him and he called over a man in a donkey jacket; it was his contact from Newham council. ‘Can anything be done about this, Bill?’ he asked.

The man went to his van, took out a clipboard and began filling in a form. ‘Hand this in at the executive entrance,’ he said, ripping off the first sheet and passing it to Harry, ‘Tell them there’s an inspection needed.’

‘There’s twenty-five of us,’ said Harry, as I watched the Subterraneans emerge one by one from the manhole, ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’

‘It better had,’ said Bill, ‘If there’s any pwoblems, jast mention the union.’

□ □ □ □ □

A disparate football crowd milled around Green Street, grumbling about closed doors, trying to force their way into pubs, and occasionally falling into the road when knocked (inadvertently or otherwise – we could simply never know) by a Csendesek. Szabo didn’t like me saying ‘A Csendesek’, firstly because he felt they might get touchy, secondly because Mosca thought they might get touchy, and thirdly because ‘Csendesek’ was actually the plural form.

‘What difference does it make?’ said Nobby, ‘We can’t know how many there are.’

Mosca sat in the landau and waited for us, but nobody was making jokes about him having Csandesek to keep him company. Our mood had been decisively altered, and inside the ground it was hard to get excited, rather than focusing on the empty seats, the echoing shouts of players and managers (when I asked him why the ground echoed despite a sell-out crowd, Szabo said ‘they have form but no mass.’ I still have no idea what that means). The players, too, seemed confused and out of sorts. There were free drinks in the executive seats, which did help, and when a Kenny Hibbitt rocket soared wide of the North Bank goal, it was it was fun to imagine a Csendesek being hit in the face by it, but this was a hollow shell of football, the meeting of obligations for beings that didn’t noticeably care about and added nothing to the game.

‘Csendesek football,’ I muttered to Nobby as the game meandered to its pale conclusion.

‘Yeah,’ he replied, draining his pint, ‘Full of Csendesek goals.’

□ □ □ □ □

There’s always an exception, and in my experience it’s usually Dicky Toolan. After disappearing for ten minutes of the second half, he reappeared at twenty to five quite cheerful, even a little bouyant, and gushing with praise for the way Mike Bailey had nullified Brooking in midfield. Back at Euston, he got two rounds in at the Royal George, and even some peanuts for Szabo’s horses. It wasn’t until we boarded the train, and he insisted on sitting in the aisle seat with nobody by the window, that the penny dropped. Her name was Millie, apparently, and he thought she was probably ‘the one’. I told him I felt his estimation was out by one. He said he was looking forward to seeing the look on Annie Bagshaw’s face when she saw them together. I told him I was, too.

In any case it couldn’t last, and not just because Dicky’s flings never did: a large crowd of Stoke fans got on at New Street and ‘Millie’ was forced to give up her seat. By the time we were back in Horseley Fields, he was looking sullen and asking me for a 2p coin to phone Annie with. We left him in the station and headed off to the Fox for last orders.