Ander understood that the original Good Ship United had sunk below the waves a little over seven months ago. Its creaking hull had given way, driven into an iceberg by an inexperienced and overwhelmed captain. Many had escaped the wreckage, but Captain Moyes himself had sunk meekly, a tear in his eye as all around him chaos reigned. The survivors had clung to whatever flotsam they could find before David de Gea had spotted land and swum for help. The owners had been furious with the perceived profligacy of the crew, and had jettisoned many at shore. Those that remained had been reassigned to a gleaming frigate, though if one looked closely the specks of rust had been visible even then.
Ander had come aboard with the new captain. A domineering presence, Van Gaal had demanded his own first mate be imported from Amsterdam, and Daley was not alone in the new crew. The best money could buy, was how the owners had announced the recruits; a band fit to bear the United name and sail the ship safely, and finally, back to its promised land. Despite the horrors they had seen a few short months ago, optimism had been high in those heady days, as the refurbished and renewed Good Ship United left port to a cacophony of cheers.
Such days seemed long ago to Ander, who had quickly been demoted below deck after falling foul of the captain's wrath; though for what no-one could quite say. And he had not been alone in failing to impress. Angel, supposedly the greatest sailor on the market, had been effective at first before falling into a deep malaise. He could now been seen more often that not in his bunker, muttering in his sleep names of friends long lost. “Cristiano”, he would whisper, “Luka. Karim. Come back Karim”, before waking up in a cold sweat, looking alarmingly around and, realising where he was, slipping solemnly back into his sweet escape. Falcao, likewise, was bought to man the great harpoon at the front of the ship, but had, it was rumoured, quickly toppled off a step and cracked his head against it. Now it was all anyone could do to get a few confused words out of him, and more often than not he couldn't even remember where the harpoon that was his duty was.
The winds which had carried them streaming out of port had long since died down, and the crew had resigned themselves to the tedium of the doldrums. Yes, it was true, they didn't look like sinking, but neither did they look like getting to the promised land any time soon. “Or at all”, Rooney could sometimes be heard murmuring. In the first weeks of the malaise the crew had turned on Able Seaman Cleverley, blaming him and his ill-fortune for the lack of wind, before they drove the poor boy to madness and over the side, where he had last been seen clinging to the most pathetic and rudimentary of rafts with a motley crew flying a claret and blue flag from the mast. Yet their luck had not altered, and the captain, for all his famous wit and supposed genius, stubbornly refused to change course in search of wind. He was utterly convinced they were on the right track. The gales, he insisted, would soon find them, it was simply a matter of trusting him. So cling to the helm he did, gazing over the horizon for a wind which never came, and watching as Jonny Evans clung to the side of the boat, helplessly vomiting over its side even in the midst of the calm.
Occasionally even Van Gaal had to sleep, and then it was the turn of the crew to man the ship, to mixed results. Antonio promised much at first, and certainly managed to pick up the pace. Yet constantly he drove the ship into rocks, or buoys, or pieces of floating debris harder to hit than miss; and after smashing the boat into a wave so hard with a violent turn to the left that it threatened to keel over entirely, he was soon relieved of the command. Adnan did little better; he made sailing seem effortless, and for a while had all convinced of his value, before Michael Carrick had popped up from his maps to calmly mention that he had been steering in the wrong direction for some time. Only David, the towering Spaniard, put the crew at any ease at all with his safe and consistent navigation. He was but one man though, and the whispers of the crew suggested he had been pouring over more lucrative offers below deck with increasingly urgency.
So sail on the Good Ship did. A once great name now bereft of greatness; ponderously slow where once it had been exhilaratingly fast. Ander had heard the stories as a boy in the Basque Country; the maverick, motley crew under the stern glance of their fearsome Glaswegian captain, forging a irresistible path through the seas, and charming every port from Boston to Beijing. Boatswain Giggs would sometimes regale the younger crew members with stories of those days; of the Great Dane and the French Magician, of impossible nights in Moscow and in Barcelona. Few dwelled with him now, believing his stories to be little more than an ageing sailor's lies, though little Lukey Shaw still hung dew-eyed on his every word. Even Ander had begun to doubt Giggs' tales after a while; surely such an ill-run operation could not have once been the greatest ship on the seven seas as his promiscuous senior claimed.
That day, stumbling onto the deck, and rubbing his unaccustomed eyes in the bright sun of the windless day, Ander spotted a great white bird circling the boat above. A good sign, he realised, and he rushed to the lookout station for a closer look. Clambering up he took a telescope to spy exactly what their new companion was. It was a great bird after all, a beautiful white swan that rushed back and forth over the boat. It stuck Ander as odd; the birds were known more inland. Swans? Sea? It made little sense. By now more of the crew had gathered below to see the omen, and cheered; the bird would bring good luck and the breeze they needed. It was then that the shot rang out. Ander looked down to see Robin with a smoking gun in hand, aimed up at the swan above. He had missed, and cursing his luck, took aim again and fired before Ander could warn him against it. His second shot was wide once again, although that was little surprise – the once fabled marksman was clumsier and clumsier in recent months. The bird squawked loudly, circled once more, and the plucky swan shat on the Good Ship United below. Then came the winds.
They were not the winds Van Gaal had promised though, but rather those of a great and relentless storm. From calm the United was plunged into chaos, reeling over wave after wave. Chris Smalling had rushed to his post but had crashed into Phil Jones coming up from below and sent him sprawling over the side. Jonny Evans wretched even more fervently as Rafael lay prone on the deck with his leg askew. Rooney and David were fighting the storm as best they could but the strength of its ferocity threatened to overwhelm even them, as Little Lukey Shaw wept and cried out for home. Ander rushed to the helm; they must change course, he realised, they were driving into the very heart of the storm itself. Yet as he stumbled to it, clinging to the sodden ropes that fell like rain from above, he saw the great shape of his captain looming above.
Van Gaal was laughing maniacally in the deluge, his face contorted in rage and hilarity as he held the United on its true course. He had lashed himself to the helm with a belt; he would not be thrown from his post even if the ship dove beneath the waves. He cursed in his ugly tongue, cursed the gods above and the owners for providing him with such a ragged crew to work with, cursed his doubters and his critics, cursed all but himself. He was right, he screamed in his madness, they would see, they would all see. Ander tried to tell the captain of his folly but he could not be heard over the roaring of the waves and the ranting of the Mad Dutchman. Even if he had Van Gaal would have struck him and sent him below. Ander screamed himself hoarse, crying reason into a mad wind that swallowed it whole. It was then that he knew. Van Gaal would never change course. They would either make it through the eye of the storm or fall in its midst; there was no hope of steering in a new direction. He looked up at his crazed captain, and round at his flailing and weeping crew mates, and sat slowly down to his bench, tying himself down and whispering a prayer to the gods above.
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