The old man didn't move, even when the referee was about to call off the match. Hundreds of other spectators had escaped the lashing rain under the stadium cover. Some had given up and gone home. The back of the stand was already too full.
As they saw the man, the crowd remembered what could happen: Heysel, Hillsborough, and their own stadium: Bradford.
The old man hadn't even pulled the hood over his head. His head didn't turn when someone tried to shout at him to come away from the rain. One of the long-time security men had tried to convince him to come under the cover, knowing it wouldn't help.
The old man hadn't given up. He sat in the front row as the seats were darkening from the lashing rain, as if he had been fighting against the devil, showing it he wasn't giving up.
I wondered why. I had started in my new job in this new town only a couple of months earlier Vicky and I had decided to split our belongings and go apart. I had moved away to build a new life.
Still, second thoughts were crawling in my mind. Maybe we were just missing a family. We had tried to have a baby for years. She yearned to be a mother. The enormous, gathering melancholy had brought her almost to the verge of a nervous breakdown.
I couldn't take any more all the accusations that were poured on me when I escaped to my work. Maybe I should've been present more, thinking how we could have made our life together more happy.
I knew Vicky had always dreamed of her own cafe and a small family guesthouse. Of a place where she could be close to people, be her own master. Make her work and work place on her own terms.
I remembered seeing the man in the earlier matches. The silent salute for him by the fellow spectators at the same stand. Today before the match someone had tapped on his shoulder, said a few nice words. The man had only looked in front and nodded. You couldn't tell anything from his expression. When the rain started, his appearance told it all.
A man I worked with, Wally, was sitting next to me. He was nearing retirement age. He had a big moustache, a peaceful voice and way of talking, a way of telling stories with fully detailed backgrounds. He had been living in this town all his life. He had this ability to bring the stories alive with a great man's understanding. It is not common anymore with many people.
"That man's name is Barney. His wife died last Sunday. Now the man is alone. He only has his thoughts. His memories."
"Memories?"
"He's had a rough life. Him and his wife had five children. They are all dead. The first daughter died before her first birthday. Sudden infant death syndrome. If not much is known about it now, at that time even less was known. Medicine wasn't very developed at the end of the 1940s.
They decided to have another child. And the third, the fourth, and the fifth. The second one, a boy, died at age 10, run over by a car on Worring's Hill slope. They've been mourning for him for 50 years."
I remembered the woman standing on that hill every morning. She had looked out on the road in a sad way. Some outside passer-by could only see a mental patient who had some fixation in her head. I hadn't seen her there in two weeks.
"Three other children lived longer and made it to adulthood. The family didn't have an easy time. The deaths of two children had left heavy scars on the wife. After that, she couldn't work anymore. This man's burden was heavy on top of all that sorrow. He's a man who had gone through wars and everything."
"Wars?"
"He had been a pilot in the Second World War. He was shot down over France. Luckily he survived when the enemy caught him. The war ended just at the right time. So that the other fight with life could start."
