Jack In The Box

John Isaacs

Description

25-year-old, football-obsessed Jack Scott is living in his family home in Fulham, London, and is at crisis point in his life. His mother Stella died two years ago and Jack has a fraught relationship with his father Richard. Jack wanted - and narrowly failed - to become a professional footballer, and now wants to revisit a desire to be a writer and stand-up comedian, but since Stella's death he's been emotionally and psychologically stuck. Although Jack supports Chelsea, he loves Barcelona and Lionel Messi. He also idolises Johan Cruijff and is a big fan of Albert Einstein, because of an extraordinary childhood discovery that brought together E=mc2 and Jack's beloved Chelsea F.C. Can he, with the help of his real and imaginary friends, and both living and dead parents, as well as footballers past and present, his sense of humour, and the music he loves, somehow find some inner peace and move his life forward? Because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about...

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783067169
• Langue: English

Extrait

Jack In The Box
John Isaacs

Copyright © 2014 John Isaacs
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador ®
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ISBN 978 1783067 169
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Concept: J Isaacs
Cover Design: Carol McShane
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

To Izzy, Zach and James
passionate players and supporters
Contents

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


THE BOOK
1

DILEMMA

2011 First week February
Jack was lying on his bed, gazing distractedly at Annus Mirabilis 1905 = E=mc 2 + Chelsea F.C . He could hear the noise from the party, but he really didn’t want to go downstairs. He was agitated and had a rising sense of claustrophobia, because he’d been made to feel like both a stranger and a prisoner in his own home.
He tried to distil in his mind what he so hated about tonight’s soirée . And it didn’t take him long. These people, these guests, had a habit of making you feel an inner sense of profound, utter desperation and failure. They were fundamentalists, absolutists, who believed in the success gene : either you had it, or, in Jack’s case, he didn’t.
The visitors were C H a MP ions League , weren’t they? And as for this inmate ? Well, he was only ever a Wormwood Scrubs player, wasn’t he?
Sure, he knew some of the guests, but that wouldn’t make facing them any easier. And even though it was a celebration in honour of the BAFTA award for T.V. Trial , presented by his father, Richard Scott Q.C., he really, really didn’t want or need to be there, precisely because he could mimic exactly what small talk they’d be making, and because he could hear perfectly the inflections in their voices as they chatted about the issues and feigned interest in each other. And he could crystal-clearly visualise the way they’d hold their glasses and smile at the waitresses. But the sharpest and most searing image in his head was of all of them looking right through him, as though who and what he was, what he thought and what he had to say, was of absolutely no value at all.
*
He was ninety-nine percent certain that he was going to sit out the entire evening in his bedroom, which was really no big deal, as it surely was the place he’d spent most of his twenty-five years in. However, the remaining one percent of doubt meant that there was still a question to answer. So, in these circumstances, and indeed when trying to resolve any important problem, he would always consult the one person in whom his trust was absolute.

*
Kissing au revoir to Edward, his adored teddy bear, who was lying next to him, and lethargically hauling his heavy mind and body up, he walked over to his desk, on which stood an open laptop displaying its Lionel Messi screensaver, a chipped, faded and beloved Chelsea mug, and right there next to it, a Perspex-framed photograph of his mother, placed deliberately, at an angle, so that the portrait side was facing the wall. Tentatively, he picked it up, and whilst turning it around, asked her if she thought he should go downstairs and join the gathering. Stella smiled a kind of fixed-in-time-forever smile and Jack, ably playing the parts of two people, told himself to put on a brave face, and do it for me .
*
As he hurled the photograph onto his bed, inside he knew she was right. But as soon as he’d successfully engineered the maternal validation that he so blatantly required, he inadvertently glanced at the wall, above the foot of his bed, where he saw his favourite work of art. It was a poster, that he’d got Stella to buy him, all those years ago.
When he’d got it home, he’d unclipped the frame, and excitedly made his amendments, before hanging it up on an existing picture hook, where it’d stayed ever since. And recalling all that still gave him the very same original tingling sensation.
The poster was a much larger version of a photograph of Albert Einstein. Dressed in a jacket, waistcoat, shirt and tie, he was standing in front of a blackboard, with his left hand resting on a table, and his right, holding a piece of chalk.
When Jack first saw it in an art shop window, he thought it was quality , and he just had to ‘ave it ; because of an epiphany he’d had at school – and the poster corroborated everything he’d come to believe.
Jack’s first impression was that the blackboard looked like a football tactics board , because it had on it, what he so needed to believe was a large football pitch centre-circle , drawn by coach Albert Einstein.
Adding to the photo’s tactical ambience, and to the left of the centre-circle , was a large right-angle, which looked exactly like a cutaway of two sides of a football pitch . And underneath that was a letter K, and next to the K, an unidentifiable sign, perhaps a number four, or probably, just one of Albert’s more oblique football signs. And because Einstein’s face and right shoulder obscured about a third of the centre-circle , Jack had had to begin his Einsteinian scribble from the blackboard’s left edge . He’d written, in white marker pen, across the vertical wing of the pitch cutaway , and on into the centre-circle , and right up to Einstein’s face. It bisected the pitch, and was Jack’s approximation of a half-way-line . Except in this case, the half-way line – drawn in a faux chalk style – read Annus Mirabilis 1905 = E=mc2 + Chelsea F.C .
*
Now, Jack’s gaze caught Einstein’s, and his quietly authoritative voice entered Jack’s head, presenting a typically independent, contradictory and recalcitrant point of view – telling him to renounce all emotional blackmail, whatever source it came from, and instead, do exactly what he, Jack, wanted to do, and only what he, Jack, instinctively felt was right. Gee thanks guys – no pressure then!
Now he had a decision to make: and decision was a word that he’d always found extraordinarily difficult to deal with. But if he really was going to make one this time, then he was very well aware that as a consequence of it, he’d have to let one of two seriously great people down. Either way, this was definitely going to be one hell of a match alright: an archetypal and hotly contested local derby that was just too close to call, not least because of the two top-flight managerial adversaries involved, and their opposing but equally compelling philosophies.
*
The Boss , a.k.a. Stella’s, argument was a highly persuasive one: that in her enforced absence – due to being transferred in a previous January window , ( a Stellar signing ) to the Other Side , much against her will – that if nothing else, he really should attend, just to properly represent her. And secondly, as much as he didn’t want to, he should go, if only to give moral support to his father, who would never say it, but would want, even need, his only child to be there for him.
And if that didn’t cut any ice, then maybe he should just be there for purely selfish motives; because, considering her beloved son was the same son who’d previously wanted and attempted to be a professional footballer, and also still hadn’t given up on the distant, yet deadly serious ambition of being a self-scripted stand-up comic, then he really shouldn’t be frightened by a little bit of mingling and small talk.
Indeed, if he had his wits about him, then he’d play the room , seeing it as a heaven-sent opportunity to source new material and cynically use the guests as a means to an end; the homework that he’d always so studiously avoided, but still needed to do, if he was ever going to succeed in this particular career ambition, or any career, or indeed, just life in general.
So, if he thought about it globally, he could turn this negative into a huge positive by utilising the party to brush up his routines. It was a test sent to challenge him and also a way of proving to himself that he really did have what it took after all.
Conversely, The Gaffer , a.k.a. Albert, knew that parties like this were something Jack had always instinctively dreaded, and with good reason, too. Albert knew that Jack felt he’d never been able to compete on equal terms. This was partly because Jack was so self-conscious about his CV, which acutely resembled a Turner Prize -winning piece, having only those two letters alone on an otherwise huge white page, and partly because he still lacked so much and needed approval so much. Therefore, Jack felt that he was still vulnerable to any attack ; and he would frequently imagine the Match Of The Day pundit Alan Hansen seriously questioning his defensive abilities.
Albert realised that Jack cared deeply, though God knows why, about what these guests downstairs thought about him. He knew that Jack was desperate to live up to his own expectations and needed everyone else to join in on the crusade. And because Jack hadn’t known the answer before she died, and now, just over two years on, he still didn’t know,