A Cockney's Journey (37 page)

Was Tyzak my father, or was my father Tyzak? And who the bloody hell is Terry? And why, after all these years, does Candy suddenly appear in my dreams to make me even unhappier. I know the mistake I made and that I’ll have to live with it, period.
    I was dragged from my thoughts by a very quiet low voice.
    “How are you feeling this morning, Eddie?” the doctor smiled.
    “Well, where shall I begin? My chest hurts and so does my back. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut and my right leg is painful. I feel as if there’s something moving about my body, hurting strategic points as it travels around my system and to top it all I pissed myself last night.”
    “That was a bit graphic, Eddie!” the ward sister grinned.
    “I can understand your anger. It’s not nice when our bodies decide not to function properly,” Doctor Jackson said. He stood looking at my chart, scribbling down his recommendations on my treatment.
    “Well, Eddie, you’ve had a myocardial infarction and I suggest that you should have an echo-cardiogram so we can find out the extent of damage that your heart sustained during the attack,” he added.
    “Listen, Doc, I’m 38 and fit. Last week, for instance, I spent the whole week carrying cement bags on my shoulder up ladders three floors high. Now, I’m telling you I haven’t had a heart attack. It’s something else. I can feel something moving around my body, from my neck down to my legs, causing me grief.”
    “Play it my way first, Eddie. I want to do more tests on you so we can eliminate certain aspects,” Doctor Jackson said.
    Well, what could I say? He had me by the balls, so I reluctantly agreed to his demands. Over the next few days I had several blood tests and more bloody tablets. Three days! Three bloody days on
nil-by-mouth
. I could have eaten a bloody scabby horse I was so hungry! The next day my starvation was ended and, after lunch, I was wheeled down to have an echo-cardiogram. I lay on the bed next to a monitor screen, while Nurse Brown covered my chest in gel; she then started to move this object around my chest, which then sent images of my heart onto the screen.
    “Hmm, strange,” she said, slowly moving the sensor around my chest. “Nothing! Nothing to indicate that you’ve had a heart attack. In fact your heart is really strong, Eddie,” she said smiling. “This will keep you going for years, although there’s slight damage to your left ventricle, which could have been caused by a virus, but not a heart attack. The valve will repair itself after a while with constant exercise.”
    Afterwards, I was wheeled back to the ward, feeling totally confused with the whole situation. As I lay in bed, another nurse came over and informed me that after breakfast, well about mid-morning tomorrow, I had to do a fit test on a treadmill and a bike. My mind now started to think about Eltham United’s game on Sunday; this would be the first time in ten years that I actually missed a game. I used the ward’s pay phone and informed Antonio that he would be in charge of Sunday’s game. I then picked the team and gave him all the relevant information. The following morning, I went through the motions of the treadmill test and bike test, wired up to a rather complicated looking machine.
    “Nothing wrong with your heart, Eddie. In fact it’s in pretty good shape,” the nurse reckoned. Well, music to my ears, not that I didn’t know that anyway.
    When I left hospital I was told I couldn’t drive or even mow the lawn; the pain in my chest persisted and generally I felt like shit; the tablets Doctor Jackson prescribed had no effect whatsoever. It would be safe to say they made me worse. It was during this period that I finally realised Sue hated me, taking the piss out of me and calling me a hypochondriac. These attacks on me started to rub off on Daniel and Stephen and it wasn’t long before they started on me. The tablets and spray I was given created massive headaches. The only person who actually cared about me was my Edward, ‘love him’.
    Over the next two weeks, my condition deteriorated. I’ve never in my life felt so lifeless and tired all the time. I couldn’t even walk up the stairs without feeling like I was going to collapse. I didn’t know what was happening to me and I actually felt like I was slowly dying and nobody gave a fuck. My hand gestures at rubbing my chest were ridiculed by Sue and my two eldest sons. Two weeks before Eltham United’s cup final at the Valley, the team played their final league game at the Butterfly Club. Eltham were 3-0 up and cruising. I stood watching, but I didn’t even have the energy to shout or even cheer them on. Suddenly, I felt sick and dizzy and my feet were killing me. Roy ran into the clubhouse and brought me out a chair to sit on. While I sat there watching the match, I decided to take my trainers off to give my feet a rest. What happened next frightened the life out of me; both my feet blew up like massive balloons. I then threw up all over the side of the pitch. An ambulance was called and I found myself being rushed to Lewisham Hospital’s observation ward.
    It took nearly three days to drain the fluid from my heart and lungs. I’ll try and explain: the drugs I was on were for someone with a fucked heart, which mine wasn’t, and the tablets slowed my heart down so much it couldn’t pump the fluid around my body. Doctor Jackson came to visit me with a bunch of student doctors, declaring I now had fucking Dressler’s Syndrome. He went on to explain that it was rare and that he’s never come across it before. Well, if that’s the case, how the fuck did he know? He then went on to tell me that he was making arrangements with Guy’s Hospital so that I could have an angiogram and that I should stop taking the tablets. I then told him about the pains in my throat and chest. He reckoned it was my subconscious playing back the pain from the very first day it happened. What he said next made me so angry, I wanted to throttle him.
    “I’ve made you an appointment to see Doctor Evans in three weeks’ time. She’s a psychiatrist.”
    
Fuck me, if I haven’t been through enough, I’ve now gotta see a bloody shrink. This is just not happening.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Over the next few months, Eltham United won the final at the valley 4-2, Daniel scoring two great goals; his second was screened on TV’s
Thames Sport
, which was one of the highlights of my life, seeing my son on the box. My health slowly, very slowly, started to improve; however I still had major pain in my chest and throat, so I decided to get a second opinion and made an appointment to see a specialist at Blackheath private hospital. You can imagine the shock I got when I entered his consulting room. Sitting looking at me was none other than Dr. Jackson. Well, I just turned round and walked straight out of the hospital, feeling completely frustrated and pissed off.
    During the closed season, my appointment from Guy’s arrived and it wasn’t long before I was on my way to the hospital. I arrived at Guy’s at around 7 a.m. and was promptly shown to my bed, where I waited to have my angiogram. After a couple of hours of consultations and blood tests, I was wheeled into theatre. If only I knew that what I was just about to go through was for nothing, I would have gone home. I lay there surrounded by this large rotating machine; there were doctors and nurses all around me. Monitors and screens picked up everything. I lay and watched this doctor make an incision with a scalpel into my main artery at the top of my right leg and then insert a probe with a camera attached to it; remarkable. I watched in amazement as the camera sent images back to the monitor, which recorded everything. I could feel the probe enter my heart, which caused slight palpitations. Then, as I was told, the doctor flushed my arteries and heart with warm liquid; from my balls to my heart I felt a tingling warm sensation.
    The machine continued to rotate, taking images from all angles of my chest. After they had finished, the doctor retrieved the probe and pushed down hard on the incision; after fifteen minutes or so my blood started to knit the wound. I was then taken back to the ward and told that it was imperative not to move a muscle for quite a few hours, otherwise I could bleed to death. So I lay there for hours like a statue, waiting for the doctor to come back with the results. In the ward with me were five other patients, all in their sixties and seventies. We just stared at each other, occasionally managing a slight smile, faces fraught with fear and uncertainty over the results.
    At around five o’clock, a group of doctors in white coats entered the ward. I remembered the tall guy; he came from Greece - Athens, actually. He was the one who performed my angiogram, really nice bloke and extremely clever. They went from bed to bed explaining to individual patients the outcome of their angiograms. The guy opposite to me was informed that he’d have to have triple heart surgery in the next few days. I’ll never forget his hauntingly shocked expression as the doctors started to explain the procedure to him. His ashen face trying to come to terms with his plight, his eyes told me he wasn’t listening to a word.
    “Will I live?” he asked nervously.
    “There’s a 50-50 chance of success; it’s a delicate and tricky operation,” the doctor said honestly. I was straining my ears, listening to the remainder of the conversation, when they turned round and strolled over to my bed. One of the doctors pulled the curtains around me; I looked at him, thinking why. They never pulled the curtains on the other patients, so why me? Am I about to receive even more bad news than the rest of the patients?
    “Evening, Eddie, How you feeling?” the doctor asked.
    “Fine, I suppose. Still feel unwell; the pain in my chest and throat just won’t budge,” I answered apprehensively.
    “Well, the good news is there’s nothing wrong with your heart and all your arteries are normal. However, there is a foreign body in your blood. Now, first of all, Eddie, have you been in contact with pigeons over the last six months, or so?”
    “Yeah, the day all this happened to me. I vividly recall cutting both my hands while fitting doors in a tank room which was covered in pigeon crap,” I informed him.
    “Your blood test results show that you have contracted a bacterial infection caused by pigeon excrement. I’ll prescribe a course of antibiotics for you. Also, I am going to write to Lewisham Hospital recommending that you have a barium meal, followed by an endoscopy,” he said. After the doctor’s consultation the nurse informed me I could return home.
    Over the next few weeks, my relationship with Sue worsened; we were continually rowing over the silliest things. Her attitude towards me had changed dramatically, having my past thrown in my face at every opportunity. It was during these trying times that I buried myself into Eltham United Football Club. My only ambition now was to secure a new ground and push my dream forward. It was June 1994 when I got a break; I found a nice private ground to rent for the 94/95 season; the club was Castaways Sports in New Eltham. The place was in a serious state of disrepair, however, I loved the way the club was situated and spent a lot of my spare time repairing the dressing rooms and shower areas, at no cost to the club’s committee. What I didn’t know at the time was that it was on the verge of bankruptcy; owing back rent and other bills. The bar area in itself was horrendous. I don’t think the beer lines were cleaned once a month, let alone on a weekly basis; the glasses were filthy and hygiene never existed. Consequently, after games, the players, officials and supporters would go to the local boozer instead of staying.
    Anyway, before the season got underway I had my barium meal and endoscopy. Fourteen months down the line they actually found out what my problem was. My entire immune system was under attack from a deadly and painful bacteria ‘helicobacter pylori’. My lymph glands tried their hardest to withstand the onslaught, but failed miserably. I caught more chest and throat infections than I care to remember. My immune system was non-existent; it took years of antibiotics and antacids, along with skip-loads of bio-yoghurt, to get my system back to somewhere near normal.
    Meanwhile the 94/95 season got underway and Eltham United started where they had left off; completely dominating the Premier Division. Rumours were rife from various club secretaries and managers and even league officials that I was playing contracted players, who in turn signed up for me under false names. Well what can I say except ‘jealousy’?
    That’s all it boils down to, bloody jealousy, so nearly every game my club had had signature checks, bloody disgrace!! But that seems to be life at the top, and believe me my team were at the top, totally invincible during this period. Being fundraiser, secretary, kit-washer and team manager, I took the brunt of everyone’s accusations, which, I must hasten to add, were totally unfounded. Was it my fault that Eltham United thumped all the so-called top sides in the division? For five years, every team we played wanted to be the first to beat us, treating an ordinary league game like the FA Cup final, Sad really! Once they were 3 or 4 down they resorted to kicking lumps of shit out of every Eltham player on the pitch; wankers!
    I made more enemies in ten years running the club than at any other time in my life. Why? Because my team had to be the best, that’s why! And we were; I used to deliberately arrive five minutes late for all league meetings, nonchalantly strolling down the aisle, looking for a seat. I would feel hundreds of eyes scanning my every move, and then the whispers would start until I sat down, knowing every motherfucker in the hall hated my guts. What a fucking buzz! Mind you, the best was yet to come. The following season would prove unbelievable; breaking the league’s hundred year record.
    My arrogance and cocky attitude got totally out of hand. I used to phone up the opposition every week and tell them the kick-off time and who the ref was, et cetera. I could tell from their voice that they resented me, so I always ended the conversation with tongue-in-cheek remarks like, “Do ya know, after this week my team has gone nearly a year without being beaten?” or, “Be prepared for a mauling, we’re on fire!” I even once told this guy that his team would be better off getting lost on their way to our ground to avoid being humiliated. When I think now how I used to act, well to say I cringe would be a massive understatement. Anyway, near the end of the season with another Premier Division title sown up and reaching another Senior Cup final, Castaways committee called for an urgent AGM. There were only three football teams and a cricket team that played there. Being a new club member, I just sat listening to the committee, telling everyone the club needed to raise £1,500 otherwise bankruptcy was a foregone conclusion. The response I heard filled me with dread; no one was prepared to stick their hands in their pockets. Harry, who was the chairman, looked distraught. He’d been running Castaways for yonks and was desperate not to let the club get closed down; still feeling unwell and not fully recovered from my health ordeal, I felt compelled not to say anything. Then Harry looked at me and asked if I had any suggestions on how to save Castaways from extinction. I gazed at him, my face expressionless pondering on my reply.
    “Well Harry, uhh, I’m not surprised your club’s in the shit. Firstly, you only open on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings; secondly, the bar area is a joke! Even I wouldn’t have a pint in here! And thirdly, you’re too cheap on pitch prices. Greenwich Council’s Sutcliffe Park is dearer than here and that’s a shit-hole. You need to open seven days a week and encourage teams to train here. Also the bar area needs tarting up, so outsiders will hire the hall for functions.”
    “We’ve survived forty years as we are,” Harry sighed.
    “Yeah, that was then and this is now. Life is much more expensive now than it was forty years ago. You can’t operate on no takings, Harry,” I stated.
    The rest of the guys in the room nodded their heads in agreement with everything I said. Harry sat with his chin in the palms of his hands, looking seriously glum.
    “I’ll tell you what, Harry; my club will bail you out of trouble but only if you sign Castaways running over to me,” I said, expecting him to tell me where to get off. His response floored me completely.
    “OK,” he said, smiling. “If that’s how the club can survive, then it’s time to move forward. Fresh blood and enthusiasm could be the answer.” He put the idea to a vote and Yours Truly now had his own ground!
    Within weeks, Eltham United were legally in total control of everything to do with Castaways Sports and Social club, however I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the end for me, big time! My dream had come true; now all I had to do was bring the club up to scratch and press forward with my plan for non-league football. Eltham had won the senior cup for the second year running and a third premier title. During the summer of ’95, the name Castaways was erased, signs taken down, being replaced with larger and better signs, stating that this social club had been renamed ‘Eltham United Football Club’. I couldn’t believe it, at long last!
    Over the summer, I had floodlights installed and joined Courage brewery. The bar and function room was revamped, with a new bar and furnishings, satellite TV and fruit machines, along with pool table and dart board. The punters flocked in seven days a week. Teams would train under floodlights till 9 p.m., then stay in the bar till closing time. We had weddings, Marks & Spencer quiz nights, birthdays, anniversaries and race nights - absolutely sublime. The more dosh the bar earned, the more was spent on the clubhouse and grounds.
    Edward was now pushing towards his twelfth birthday and started to play for a local kids’ team. After paying his membership and weekly subs, Edward found himself on the bench all the time; his non-appearance during games upset me greatly. He used to get upset and sometimes would cry out of frustration. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that Eltham United should have their own under-twelves. I advertised for players and a manager and introduced a junior pitch into the ground. I must admit we just squeezed it in. We were bombarded with youngsters who wanted to play football. I was utterly shocked at the amount of kids who wanted to play; they would turn up, with their parents, in their droves for training sessions. It wasn’t long before we had under-twelves and under-elevens. The club was seriously buzzing, and the future of Eltham United looked pukka!
    It was now August and the 95/96 season was only five weeks away. I had transformed the club from going bankrupt, into a viable concern. Unfortunately, my success with the club and the constant usage of the grounds brought about complaints from a couple of residents whose gardens backed on to the ground. One in particular, who I won’t name, made it his own mission to destroy me and get the club closed down. The bastard had powerful friends in extremely high places. I later found out that he was a ‘mason’ and in the clan were magistrates and old Bill, so you can imagine, I had no chance!
    The 95/96 season was nearly upon us; I sat on the veranda, drinking coffee alone, my mind buzzing with images, daydreaming of the future, non-league football, FA cup qualifying rounds. My thoughts quickly disappeared after noticing out the corner of my eye a figure standing watching me from the other side of the junior pitch. He was too far away to see who he was or even describe him; he just stood there, motionless. I felt a bit uneasy, and not sure of myself. Why I felt nervous I don’t know. I mean, it was broad daylight and sunny, even though I was alone in acres and acres of open ground, surrounded by tall trees. But for some weird reason, I was definitely on edge. I took a sip of my coffee taking my eye off the figure for a second, when I returned my gaze he’d gone from where he stood. To my horror he was now standing at the back of the main pitch under the trees. No fucking way did he cover that distance in a second, I thought, absolutely no way. He stood, staring in my direction, in the shadows of the trees. He then raised his arm, gesturing me to come over. It was at this point a car screeched into the car park. I glanced at the car and immediately back to the where the figure stood. He was gone! I kept staring at where he’d stood, my mind completely confused, asking me questions.
Oh! Shit, it could have been…nah leave it out, Ed.
    I was dragged from my hideous thoughts by the sound of someone’s voice.
    “Hi, Eddie, I presume?” the guy asked.