Wayne Izzard passed the bag of apples to the ten-year-old boy wearing the Man United shirt. The boy took it and held out the £1 coin that his mother had given him. The boy examined the dragon tattoo snaking up Wayne's forearm curiously. The mother watched the exchange approvingly.
'Thank you, Quentin, that's very gentlemanly of you. Isn't it, Wayne?'
Wayne looked down at the boy and forced a smile.
'Very...'
Quentin fixed him with a black, suspicious eye. He opened his mouth to speak. Wayne noted the Man United watch, the Man United headband and the Man United scarf. These items left little room for doubt about what the chosen topic for
discourse would be.
'What team do you support, Wayne?' Quentin had a cut-glass, private-school accent. He pronounced Wayne, 'Wine'. His mother fussed over the grapes, picking one, then another and putting them, then crushing them, in her red, full mouth.
Wayne ignored him, although pressed by a sense of futility. The opening of the World Cup was now only days away. The whole market, customers and stallholders alike, would run on one fuel only. And it wouldn't be money, or gossip, or the number of air miles involved in putting out-of-season asparagus on the stands.
'What about some sprouting broccoli? That's lovely. Look at that colour.'
'West Ham colours,' said the brat.
The market, itself located within hearing distance of the terraces of a large, but not particularly successful club, was going to run on football for at least a month. What happened, who scored, who fumbled, who passed, who fouled and never got called on it, who abused the ref after he had let extra time run for three illicit minutes during which the enemy team had slipped in a disputed goal.
'What TEAM do you support, Wine?' insisted Quentin.
Quentin, thought Wayne, had not done his market research properly. If he had, he would know that Wayne Izzard didn't care about football. He never had, and he never would. He had never supported a team, and never would support a team. He thought the whole idea of supporting a team made no sense whatsoever.
He knew that he was meant to care profoundly that Wayne Rooney had made a balls-up of an open goal the previous Saturday, that Adebayor had handballed five yards from the ref and got away with it and that Kaká had... Kaká had...
He realised at that moment that he didn't even know who Kaká was, or what team he played for. He just heard his name bandied around at the market all the time ricocheting from stall to stall like a demented, invisible hummingbird, so he could not help but be aware that someone called Kaká who played football existed. But he knew that he was supposed to know. And that for a 26-year-old man working a fruit stall in a socially mixed neighbourhood of east London, to not know was close to an admission of homosexuality or mental illness.
'Everton! Everton!'
A smaller boy, wearing a blue shirt, had appeared from behind the mother and had begun to chant and punch the air.
'Rubbish!' responded Quentin. 'Smelly, pooey rubbish.'
Their mother smiled indulgently.
'I'll just have some strawberries.'
Wayne passed over a punnet of strawberries and watched the woman arrange them carefully in her fair-trade coir bag. She handed over a crisp £50 note, which Wayne just about managed to change.
'I bet you're a Hammers supporter, or something like that,' said Quentin, contemptuously. 'Same as the broccoli.'
'Everton,' said the smaller boy, in a smaller voice.
'Something like that,' responded Wayne, finally. He suppressed a desire to slip one of the rotten strawberries hidden at the bottom of the punnet down the boy's maid-pressed Johnnie Boden shirt.
'Hammers are rubbish,' shouted Quentin.
'They're s**t,' joined in the smaller boy.
'Maximus!' reprimanded the mother.
'But they are,' sulked Maximus.
'You're right,' replied Wayne.
He turned away swiftly to serve the next customer. Maximus and Quentin looked both aggrieved and puzzled. Their mother shepherded them away from the stall to the olive oil stand next door. Wayne felt relieved, but he knew it was only a temporary respite.
Sure enough, the large man he was now serving, with a face the colour and texture of the kind of pancake that you added lemon and sugar to, was clearly preparing for conversation. Incomers to this area considered it a badge of honour to banter with the stallholders. It made them, considered Wayne, feel that they belonged, though why they would want to belong among the sort of people who worked in the market he could never fathom.
'I don't reckon England have got a chance, do you?' he said, as he fingered some unripe figs. He locked Wayne's eyes with his, ferocious and remotely fanatical. 'All the injuries. Capello's all over the place. Can't believe he didn't put Oble in the squad. Useless pasta-munching prat.'
'Useless. Pasta. Prat,' parroted Wayne, checking his watch, and wondering if he had misheard the name Oble and not really caring whether he had or not. Two more hours to go.
