Beckham (13 page)

Victoria told me about Stuart, and about a lot else besides, as we drove past crowded pub after crowded pub around North-east London. When you meet The One, there's a lot of catching up to do. We made a good start that night and, an hour or so later, I had my good idea:

‘I know this little Chinese.'

There was a restaurant in Chingford that I'd visited with Mum and Dad. Nothing spectacular but it had one big thing to recommend it: there was never anyone else in the place whenever I'd eaten there. I gave Victoria directions; we parked and went in. Perfect: it was absolutely deserted. We sat down and I ordered:

‘Could we have a Coke and a Diet Coke, please?'

The lady who ran the restaurant looked at us.
Oh, the last of the big spenders
. She didn't have a clue who we were. I could understand her
not recognizing me, but Victoria? It was a little world of its own, that Chinese.

‘You can't have drink unless you eat meal.'

I said we just wanted a quiet drink. She wasn't having any of it:

‘This is an exclusive restaurant, you know.'

We were getting chucked out. I offered to pay for a full meal if we could just have our drinks but it was too late for that and, suddenly, at eleven o'clock at night, we were standing back out in the street. It was time for Victoria to have her good idea:

‘We could go round to my friend's house.'

My luck: the friend was Melanie Chisholm. What had I got myself into? I was out with one Spice Girl and now we were going round to another one's house. How much more nervous could a lad get on a first date?

When we arrived, Melanie was in her pajamas and had got out of bed to answer the door. The moment we walked in, my heart sank. There was this big Liverpool FC poster up on the door.
I'm not ready for this
.

I sat down and Victoria and Melanie went missing for ten minutes. I think they were in the kitchen chatting while I was left on my own on the sofa in the lounge like a complete lemon. By the time they came back, I'd wound myself up all over again. It was like being at a really awkward tea party. Victoria was nervous too, I think. We sat at the two ends of the sofa as if we hadn't been properly introduced. They chatted. I sat and listened. I'm not sure I actually said a word the whole time we were there.

An hour or two later we were back in Victoria's MG, continuing our tour of the M25's beauty spots. I remember she drove us past her parents' house at one point, maybe just so that I'd know where to find her. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, we were back at the Castle. The Spice Girls were off to the States the following day and we had to say our goodbyes. I got back in my car and waved. Victoria
promised to call when she got to New York. Not exactly the most romantic of first dates, but I felt like it couldn't have been better. I'd known that all we needed was to meet. Love at first sight? No, it was happening quicker than that.

So was everything else. That 1996/97 season United won the League again and got closer than we ever had before to what I think had become the manager's real ambition: winning the European Cup again for the club. It's a bit like learning soccer all over again, getting to grips with playing the best teams in Europe. There have been one or two teams that United seem to have played over and over again in the last ten years. I'm thinking of Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich, in particular. It's almost as if you have to meet those teams in the Champions League just to find out what kind of progress you've made on the European stage.

In the autumn of 1996, I remember we got beaten twice by Juve, 1–0 both home and away. No matter how much of the ball we had, we just couldn't workout how to defeat them. We still qualified from the first group stage, though, and it felt for a while like we were on our way. There was one amazing night at Old Trafford when we spanked Porto 4–0 in the quarter-finals. That was the start, I think, of people taking United seriously as a team that could win the competition. That year, we went into the semi-finals against Borussia Dortmund believing we had a real chance. Instead, they mugged us: like so many German teams, they were very organized and knew exactly what they were doing. They defended really well; I remember their left-back, Jorg Hein-rich, was about as difficult to play against over those two games as any player I've ever faced. After they beat us 1–0 in the first leg in Dortmund, we fancied our chances, but they repeated that score line at Old Trafford and then went on to beat Juventus in the final.

Those games against Dortmund were real killers but, otherwise, things couldn't have gone much better for me that season. I found myself wearing the number 10 shirt, playing almost every game, and scoring
the kind of goals I used to when playing for Ridgeway Rovers: like the one from beyond the halfway line at Selhurst Park against Wimbledon, or the volley against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on the day I first met Victoria. To top it all off, I was voted PFA Young Player of the Year. When the opponents you're up against in the Premiership every week give you that kind of recognition, you can't help but feel like you're doing something right.

It was a great time to be a United player. We had the best manager in the country, and it definitely felt like we had the best number two as well. I know the boss said some uncomplimentary things about Brian Kidd after he left Old Trafford to take the manager's job at Blackburn Rovers, but I thought they made a great team. Kiddo's a fantastic coach—just ask anybody who's ever worked with him—and I think, at United especially, he did a great job working between the boss and the players. Everybody in the dressing room thought that Brian was ‘one of us'. After training or after a game, no one needed to watch what they were saying or doing. Kiddo would be having a laugh along with the rest.

He knew when it was time to be serious too. We worked really hard in training but you never noticed it with Kiddo because he made sure every session was different: it stopped us ever getting bored and the new routines kept players fresh. Scholesy and Nicky Butt and the Nevilles had known Brian even longer than I had: he was United through and through. I think that's part of the reason he handled relationships between people at the club so well. I know I'm not the only one who, at some point during his time at Old Trafford, had to thank him for defusing a confrontation with the boss. He never went against the manager, or tried to undermine him in any way, but I always felt like he looked out for us players. It made for a really happy dressing room.

It was also a pretty successful dressing room. We were disappointed to miss out in Europe but, in May 1997, winning the Premiership for the second year running was a big achievement in itself. In the end, we
finished seven points clear, but it was more than just a one-or two-horse race. Liverpool, Newcastle and Arsenal all had a go at different times in the season. We won the title with a couple of weeks to spare; it was a bit strange becoming champions thanks to another team losing. On Monday night we drew 3–3 with Middlesbrough at Old Trafford. You don't forget any game where Gary Neville scores a goal. Then on Tuesday, Liverpool, the only team who could beat us to the title, had a televised match against Wimbledon. I was round at Ben Thornley's house with Gary to see it. I don't like watching soccer on television in the best of times and, with what was at stake, I couldn't stand the tension. Gary and I ended up going out for a walk and missing the whole of the second half.

By the time we got back, Wimbledon had won and that meant we were champions. Normally at the end of a game in which you win a trophy, you can let some of the adrenaline out, on the field and back in the dressing room. That evening in 1997, though, we were sitting in Ben Thornley's lounge. We broke the club curfew that night; the only time I ever did. We had a game against Newcastle coming up on Thursday and so we should have been at home, getting an early night. I'm not a drinker or a clubber anyway, as a general rule. But that evening was different. We'd won the League, hadn't we? It didn't feel like an occasion to be sitting indoors, so the three of us went out on the town in Manchester and had a beer or two more than we should have done. I'm sure the manager knew—he knows everything about everybody—but we got away with it. And there was no harm done because we drew against Newcastle two evenings later.

I think the really big winner that season was probably my cell phone company. I knew straight away I was crazy about Victoria. I found myself thinking about how and when I could be with her during most of every day we were apart. No sooner had we met, she'd had to jet off to America with the Spice Girls. We spent hour after hour talking and the bills got scarier and scarier. But they were the best investment I've ever
made. The couple of times we'd actually been face to face, I'd felt so nervous it took my breath away. It's strange how different it was on the phone. It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to be telling this amazing woman all about my life—and my feelings—and listening to her do the same. By the time she got back to England, it felt like we really knew each other. We started to find out, as well, what we were going to mean to each other. Whatever the phone company had made out of it seemed like a bargain.

The florists didn't do too badly by me, either. I sent flowers to each new hotel Victoria booked into and a single red rose every day for the best part of a month. I couldn't wait for her to come home. I think perhaps people have this idea that our life together must always have been about glamorous parties: stars, luxuries, photo opportunities. That couldn't be further from the truth. Having the time together was all that mattered. The first date had been about driving around, getting thrown out of a Chinese restaurant, and sitting on a friend's sofa. Our second evening out was just as low-key as the first. We arranged to meet up outside another pub—that's how stylish we were—this one called City Limits. A strange thing happened on the way there. I stopped at a petrol station and went in to buy some chewing gum. Just as I was pulling out of the lot, I saw Victoria arrive, jump out and do the same thing. Fresh breath, or something to steady the nerves? Both probably. I drove on to City Limits and parked.

When Victoria arrived, I jumped out, went over to her MG and got in beside her. For such a little car, I remember there was a big gap between the driver's and front passenger's seats. We didn't go anywhere. We talked. And we kissed, for the first time. I had a cut on my finger from training. Victoria reached across me to the glove compartment and pulled out this sprig of a plant, Aloe Vera.

‘It'll heal you.'

She rubbed it on the cut and then gave it to me. I must have told her about getting hurt on the phone and she'd brought it along. I
remember, a week or two later, looking in my fridge and seeing this Aloe Vera plant, starting to decompose in a bag on the shelf. By then, whatever magic it contained had already done its job. At the end of that evening in the parking lot at City Limits, I felt like at least a year's worth of dreams had come true.

I went mad the next day and had roses and a Prada handbag delivered to Victoria at her mum's house. It's amazing what you find out in a
Smash Hits
‘Likes and Dislikes' feature. I still try and send gifts like that now: it's a natural thing to me. If you love someone, you want to treat them, surprise them, remind them how you feel, whether that means a weekend away somewhere, or a bowl of fruit in the morning laid out in the shape of a heart. I know Victoria thinks I'm romantic like that. Some people reading about it might call it soft. But that's me. I get a good feeling now, when I see Brooklyn with his baby brother or with other children at school, looking after them, being gentle, making sure they're okay. I think I know the parts of my character that I've inherited from my mum. Some of what a person grows up to be comes from what they see and learn. There are other things, deeper things, that are already with you and all you have to do is pass them on.

The next time Victoria and I met, we decided I would do the driving. Not that we had any better idea as to where to go. Victoria's mum and her brother, Christian, dropped her off at our favorite dodgy rendezvous, the City Limits parking lot. As she got out of her mum's BMW, Christian leant over and whispered to his mum:

‘Well, at least he's got a decent car.'

I read somewhere that Victoria liked Aston Martins, so I managed to borrow this brand new silver DB7 from a showroom, telling the salesman that I was thinking about buying one. Of course, if it was going to make a difference with Victoria, I would have done just that. After a minute or two of our ‘I don't know, where do you want to go?' routine, we settled on a run down to Southend: I'd gone to the seaside there so
often with Mum and Dad and Lynne and Joanne when I was a kid. Who cared about the state of the beach or the sea back then? We'd always splashed straight in and loved every minute of it. Now, as we headed off round the North Circular, I suddenly realized this spanking new car didn't have a map in it. Worse still, I couldn't remember the way: Dad had always driven us down there and I'd probably been too busy messing about in the back with Joanne to take much notice of where we were going.

I couldn't tell Victoria I was already lost before we'd even left London, could I? So I just drove: all the way to Cambridge, as it turned out. We stopped and had a pizza in a restaurant in the middle of town, never mind that one or two of the other people in there were turning round and having to take a second look. It felt to me like Victoria and I had the place to ourselves. We drove back to London and I dropped her home at her mum and dad's. Finally it had been like a proper date: dinner for two, even if we had ended up about seventy miles north of where we'd been planning to go.

Next time out was lovely, too: the back row at the movies down in Chelsea. We saw Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire
, but all I cared about was whose hand I was holding. The big deal that evening was going back to Victoria's parents' house afterwards and meeting Tony and Jackie for the first time. We walked in and I was so embarrassed. I remember sitting down on the settee, a big brown leather thing, the material gathered and pinned down with those little buttons, worrying about what noise I might make if I moved on it to get comfortable.