Beside the Corner Flag

Nadia first noticed Miles because he was carrying a corner flag like a defeated standard. The ground was soft, the socket was blocked and the match was supposed to begin in twelve minutes. Everybody else was discussing whether somebody ought to do something.

“Is that the missing one?” she asked.

“It’s present. Its hole is missing.”

She put down her referee’s bag. He found the socket beneath a patch of mud, cleared it and planted the flag. When he stood, his knees were wet. He looked at her clean black socks and said he hoped her afternoon would go better.

It did not. The home team lost by three goals, a substitute argued about a throw-in and somebody’s father shouted advice that would have required several additional sets of eyes. Nadia walked off at the final whistle with her jaw aching from holding it still.

Miles waited near the equipment shed. He offered her a bottle of water, still sealed. She accepted it and asked whether the ground always produced such excellent conversation.

“Only when we lose,” he said. “Also when we win, but then it’s called passion.”

She laughed. At twenty-eight, she had been refereeing adult amateur matches for three years and was tired of being told it would build character. She already had a character. What she needed was a working shower and for the groundsman to stop calling her young lady.

Miles was thirty-two, a survey technician during the week and one of the club’s practical volunteers at weekends. He was not the groundsman. The groundsman, he explained, disliked getting his knees wet.

“Then he’s chosen an interesting hobby,” Nadia said.

They talked until the changing-room corridor emptied. He asked if she would be back. She said appointments were arranged elsewhere, but probably. He said he would ensure the flag had somewhere to go.

The next time, he had a brush and a tin of white paint. A fence panel beside the entrance had been scratched. Nadia arrived early and watched him work while eating the last half of a sandwich.

“Do you do everything?” she asked.

“Only badly enough that somebody eventually takes over.”

“You’re still painting.”

“The strategy needs work.”

She liked his narrow smile and the way he looked directly at her without trying to identify which part of refereeing required an explanation. When she mentioned an awkward fixture, he asked whether she enjoyed the job. Most people asked why she did it.

“I like making a decision and moving on,” she said. “At work I can spend two weeks choosing where a paragraph goes.”

She edited technical manuals. The contrast pleased him. They discussed instructions that began by telling people not to do precisely what the design invited. He described a measuring tool whose case shut only if you removed the instructions first.

After the match he asked whether she wanted coffee away from the club. She said yes before remembering how often men seemed charming when their opinions had not yet been tested.

He chose a café near the station. She chose a table where she could see the door, a habit from growing up with a father who arrived late and expected nobody to mind. Miles arrived five minutes early and looked relieved to see her, as though he had worried she might reconsider.

They liked different music and the same terrible chips from a place beside the bypass. He had an older sister who borrowed his car. She had a younger brother who borrowed everything except advice. Miles told a story about getting lost with a survey team on a road they were supposed to be mapping. Nadia laughed hard enough to spill coffee on her sleeve.

On their third date she kissed him outside a closed florist. On their fourth he cooked dinner and asked before inviting her to watch a match with his friends. She said no. He accepted the answer without treating it as a test she had failed.

By March she had a toothbrush at his flat and knew which cupboard held the mugs. She also knew his brother, Will, played for the club. Miles mentioned it casually at first, then more often as Will began getting regular starts.

“He’s quick,” Miles said one evening.

“So you’ve said.”

“Am I boring you?”

“Only in a very specific position on the pitch.”

He threw a cushion at her. She caught it and kissed him. There was nothing difficult about the connection until she was appointed to a fixture in which Will’s team played an important local rival.

Nadia raised the connection with the person arranging appointments. The fixture was reassigned. She did not make a fuss and did not tell Miles until he asked why someone else was taking the game.

“Because we’re together,” she said.

He looked surprised. “I wouldn’t ask you to favour us.”

“I know. That’s not the only concern.”

He nodded, though she could see he thought she was being overcautious. She let it pass. They were still new enough to leave certain disagreements neatly folded for later.

Later arrived on a Sunday when she watched as an ordinary spectator. Miles had asked whether she wanted to come. She agreed because it mattered to him, and because she could attend a match without being responsible for it.

Will scored early. Nadia applauded. In the second half he went down near the edge of the penalty area. From where she stood, partly screened by another player, she could not tell what happened. The referee waved play on. The crowd shouted. Miles threw out both hands.

“Come on! That’s obvious!”

Nadia said nothing. Miles turned to her. “You saw it.”

“Not clearly.”

“He caught his leg.”

“I couldn’t see.”

The game continued. A man beside them recognised Nadia and asked whether the referee needed new glasses. She said she wasn’t there to assess him. Miles laughed, a short, uncomfortable sound that seemed designed to keep the man friendly.

The man continued. Miles said, “She can’t say it, but she knows.”

Nadia looked at him. “No. I don’t.”

He stopped smiling. She moved a few steps away and watched the rest alone. When the final whistle came, Will’s team had lost. Miles followed her towards the entrance.

“It was a joke,” he said.

“You made me part of it.”

“I didn’t mean anything.”

“You used my job to make your opinion sound better. Then you told people what I thought.”

He looked back towards the pitch. “I’m allowed to be annoyed.”

“Of course you are.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She was too angry to keep searching for a version he might hear. She said she would call later and left. On the train, she wrote a message three times and deleted it. She did not want to become his referee outside the ground as well.

He called that evening. She let it ring, then answered the second time. He said he had thought about it. He had heard himself saying the sort of thing he disliked from the touchline and had tried to make it harmless because it came from him.

“Did you talk to Will?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wasn’t sure it was a penalty either.”

She shut her eyes. Miles added quickly that he understood this was not the point. He owed her an apology whether Will had been fouled or not.

“You do.”

He apologised. Then he asked whether they could meet the following evening. She agreed, less certain than before about how much they understood each other.

Before they ended the call, he said he had spoken to the man beside them at the ground. He told him Nadia had not agreed about the decision and should not have been brought into the argument. The man shrugged and changed the subject. Miles admitted he found that frustrating. Nadia said the correction still mattered, even if nobody thanked him for it. She was glad he had made it where the first comment had been heard, rather than leaving her to explain herself at the next match. Then she wished him goodnight and went to bed.

They walked by the canal because sitting opposite him at a table seemed too formal. Miles said he had never thought of himself as a person who made a game unpleasant. He picked up litter, painted fences and stayed late putting things away. He had treated that work as evidence that his opinions deserved indulgence.

Nadia said being useful did not make him cruel, but it did not make the words less tiring to hear. She liked watching football. She liked him. She did not want to spend her free afternoon defending a colleague from somebody who kissed her goodnight.

“I don’t need you to agree with every decision,” she said. “I need you to stop borrowing my agreement.”

He nodded. They walked another ten minutes before he took her hand. She let him, though affection did not instantly remove the awkwardness. At the bridge she asked whether he wanted dinner. He said yes, if she did. She did.

The next match they attended together was a women’s cup fixture at another ground. Nadia knew none of the officials. Miles knew none of the players. For once there were no personal loyalties demanding expression. They bought tea that tasted faintly of its cardboard cup and stood under a leaking roof.

A difficult decision went against the team Nadia had begun supporting. She made an outraged noise before catching herself. Miles turned towards her with a raised eyebrow.

“You may enjoy this for exactly five seconds,” she said.

He looked at his watch. They laughed. Then he asked what she thought she had seen, rather than telling her. She explained the angle, the obstruction, what neither of them could know from the stand. The conversation was interesting. She had missed being able to find the game interesting instead of personal.

In May the club held a work morning. Nadia came to help because she now knew several people there besides Miles. She spent two hours painting the back of the equipment shed while he repaired a bench with another volunteer. Nobody asked her to explain a decision. One boy asked whether referees got cold. She said often.

“You should run more,” he advised.

She laughed and asked him to pass the brush.

At lunchtime Miles brought sandwiches. They sat on the repaired bench, cautiously at first, testing whether it deserved confidence. He had paint on his wrist. She had paint behind her ear, for reasons neither could reconstruct.

Will came over and asked if she would watch his next fixture. She said she might, depending on her own appointment. He nodded and began discussing the sandwich fillings. It was ordinary, exactly as she wanted.

After everybody left, Nadia and Miles walked the pitch to collect stray rubbish. Beside the corner, he found a loose flag socket and groaned. She held the flag while he cleared it, its cloth moving in the afternoon breeze. When he stood, his knees were wet again.

“Excellent strategy,” she said. “Somebody will take over any day.”

He kissed her, muddy hands held carefully away from her clean shirt. Then they put the flag back together, carried it to the shed and went home before anyone could invent another job for them.