Light At The End Of The Tunnel

by Roge Slater

It was like a scene from one of those old black and white gangster movies: a dark room, deep in the bowels of the edifice. Few had the privilege of direct access without an invitation into the heart of the empire. Fewer still felt privileged when leaving; lighter in spirit, or pocket, or both, after transgressing the regime’s strict rules.

With no windows and a single weak bulb hanging shadeless from a cord in the centre of the ceiling, it was gloomy at best. Above the light whirred a four-bladed fan, though its languid swirling did little to disturb the dust on the lamp, let alone circulate the fug of the afternoon around the room.

On the desk, a cigarette butt smoldered away, rested on a saucer. The matching cup was long gone, shattered into pieces against the far wall, evidenced by a faint splattering of coffee droplets and a lone piece of china protruding from the soft, yellowing plaster.

There were pages and scraps of paper torn away from a notebook randomly covering the desk. Torn and discarded, as though plans had been drawn and redrawn but now were in complete disarray. Their owner was hidden deep in the shadows of the room, shielded from the despair of the day by the high-backed padded chair. His right hand rested on the worn leather, slowly rotating a pencil between rough, nicotine-stained fingers.

There was a sharp crack — like a gunshot — as the pencil snapped. It was an almost involuntary reaction to the frustration, anger and tension that electrified the atmosphere. Immediately the two halves were discarded, thrown to one side where they joined a growing pile, ready as if to be used as kindling for some future fire. The hand stretched out and took another from the drawer. Unconsciously tapped twice on the desk, the new pencil was soon being slowly rotated like its predecessor.

On the right of the desk was an opened bottle of wine — a 1957 Nervi Gattinara — a great vintage red from Piedmont, aged in wood. The cork, discolored from the wine at one end, was discarded to the side, and a single lead crystal broad bowl glass stood half empty nearby, the stem and bowl unmarked. The contents were perfectly still. A fleck or two of dust had settled on the surface of the deep red liquid to tell it had been untouched for hours, perhaps left as though the first mouthful had added to a bad taste in the mouth, rather than bringing forth the richness and depth of the fruit and the complex tar and tannin mix of the vintage.

In the background, a radio played. Poorly tuned, the voice was indistinct. It was difficult to make out any of the words, though the occasional yelp of excitement at least gave a change in tone before the hiatus subdued and the general drone returned.

Slow, deliberate breathing was the only other sound in the room, regular and keeping time with the movement of the second hand on the wall clock. It was almost too dark to make out the time.

Occasionally the stillness was disturbed by a light throat-clearing cough and a faint whirring sound, almost as if there was an echo of a hairdryer churning away outside. Neither sound disturbed the rotation of the pencil. The perpetrator was deep in thought, churning over and over some mystical gargantuan problem, looking for the solution and perhaps a ray of light in the gloom.

Timid footsteps sounded from the corridor outside, the sound mixing seamlessly with the chink of light creeping fearfully under the closed door. The light streaked across the carpeted floor but faded before reaching the desk, insufficient to cast another shadow into the mixture of blacks and greys. After an abeyance, just as fearfully the footsteps receded, replaced by the monotone rhythmic breathing and a crackle of French music amongst the semi-audible commentary from the airwaves.

Still spinning, the pencil paused as the voices on the radio raised to a new high. Suddenly the fingers clenched in hope, but after a second or two the moment passed, the radio returned to the laboured, tedious delivery of most of the previous hour and a half, and the hand fell to the desk. Then it slowly raised itself, as if carrying the weight of the world, before the pencil again began to spin between the second, third and fourth fingers of the aged but pliable hand. Time wove its silent path to conclusion, the seconds passing faster and faster to the inevitable end.

The pencil maintained its synchronous movement with the second hand while the fan drifted on laboriously, still failing miserable in its task to lighten the atmosphere. Even now, it seemed that dust was starting to settle on the blades as they fought their way through the dense aura.

The breathing was still deep and precise. Then the radio peaked again, and there was a sharp intake of breathe, then a pause. Ears strained, tuning themselves to the fuzz of the out of tune signal, filtering out even the merest though of any other sound while searching for the confirmation of a moment just passed. There it was again. One excited, extended but distinct word: “Goooooaaaaaaaal”, followed by the confirmation that Ji Dong-Won had scored for Sunderland.

There was an outpouring of relief, and as if by magic, the light under the door suddenly shone brighter. In the corridor there was the sound of footsteps running, and in the distance a cheer. The hand stopped rotating the pencil and the fist clenched, this time banging on the desk. The pencil shattered and the wine glass rattled into the bottle, the reverberation enough to force the cork to roll onto the floor.

There was a single word –- “Yes” –- uttered with such a relief of tension and pressure it seemed almost venomous. Sir Alex stood, emptied the glass and strode forcefully across his office, recharged and ready to face another day, another step, another year, another battle in the challenge to repeat Premier League success, safe in the knowledge that the blue noses had lost.

Game On.



The Light at The End of The Tunnel by Roger Slater is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.